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LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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THE WHITTIER YEAR BOOK 

PASSAGES FROM THE VERSE AND PROSE 

OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

CHOSEN FOR THE DAILY 

FOOD OF THE LOVER 

OF THOUGHT AND 

BEAUTY 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



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?£ 






Copyright, 1895, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights resej'ved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co- 






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3[anuatp 

THE PAGEANT 

A SOUND as if from bells of silver, 
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, 
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear. 



^6» 



A brightness which outshines the mornin 
A splendor brooking no delay. 
Beckons and tempts my feet away. 

I leave the trodden village highway 

For virgin snow-paths glimmering through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue ; 

I tread in Orient halls enchanted, 

I dream the Saga's dream of caves 
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves! 

I walk the land of Eldorado, 

I touch its mimic garden bowers, 

Its silver leaves and diamond flowers ! 

What miracle of weird transforming 

In this wild work of frost and light, 
This glimpse of glory infinite ! 

This foregleam of the Holy City, 

Like that to him of Patmos given. 

The white bride coming down from heaven ! 



JANUARY 



Emancipation proclamation, 1863; Maria Edgeworth, 1767; 
Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819. 

Not unto us who did but seek 
The word that burned within to speak, 
Not unto us this day belong 
The triumph and exultant song. 

Upon us fell in early youth 
The burden of unwelcome truth, 
And left us, weak and frail and few, 
The censor's painful work to do. 

Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
The air we breathed was hot with blame ; 
For not with gauged and softened tone 
We made the bondman's cause our own. 
Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation. 



James Wolfe, 1726; Justin Winsor, 1831. 

Drearily blows the north-wind 

From the land of ice and snow ; 
The eyes that look are weary, 

And heavy the hands that row. 
And with one foot on the water. 

And one upon the shore. 
The Angel of Shadow gives warning 

That day shall be no more. 

The Red River Voyageur. 
2 



JANUARY 
3 

Lucretia Mott, 1793. 

Only in the gathered silence 
Of a calm and waiting frame, 

Light and wisdom as from Heaven 
To the seeker came. 

Not to ease and aimless quiet 
Doth that inward answer tend, 

But to works of love and duty 
As our being's end, — 

Not to idle dreams and trances, 
Length of face, and solemn tone, 

But to Faith, in daily striving 
And performance shown. 

To 



4 

Jakob Ludwig Grimm, 1785. 

Still linger in our noon of time 

And on our Saxon tongue 
The echoes of the home-born hymns 

The Aryan mothers sung. 

And childhood had its litanies 

In every age and chme ; 
The earliest cradles of the rade 
' Were rocked to poet's rhyme. 

Child-Songs. 

3 



JANUARY 



Stephen Decatur, 1779. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door. 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 

Snow-Bound. 



Epiphany; Charles Sumner, 181 1. 

Yet, weak and blinded though we be, 
Thou dost our service own ; 

We bring our varying gifts to Thee, 
And Thou rejectest none. 

O Love ! O Life ! Our faith and sight 
Thy presence maketh one, 
4 



JANUARY 

As through transfigured clouds of white 
We trace the noon-day sun. 

So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed. 

We know in Thee the fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed. 

Our Master. 

One language held his heart and lip. 
Straight onward to his goal he trod. 

And proved the highest statesmanship 
Obedience to the voice of God. 

Sumner. 

7 

Israel Putnam, 1718. 

At times I long for gentler skies. 

And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
But homesick tears would fill the eyes 

That saw the Cross without the Bear. 
The pine must whisper to the palm, 
The north-wind break the tropic calm; 
And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to 
beauty join. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



Robert Schumann, 1810; L. Alma Tadema, 1836. 

Like warp and woof all destinies 
Are woven fast, 
5 



^ JANUARY 

Linked in sympathy like the keys 
Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 

Break but one 
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 

Through all will run. 

My Soul and I. 



9 

John K. Paine, 1839. 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and 

towers 
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood. 
Or garden wall, or belt of wood ; 
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 
A fenceless drift w^hat once was road ; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 
The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 
And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

Snow-Bound. 

6 



JANUARY 

10 

Ethan Allen, 1737 ; Aubrey de Vere, 1814, 

The threads our hands in blindness spin 
No self-determined plan weaves in ; 
The shuttle of the unseen powers 
Works out a pattern not as ours. 

Ah ! small the choice of him who sings 
What sound shall leave the smitten strings ; 
Fate holds and guides the hand of art ; 
The singer's is the servant's part. 

Overruled. 

II 

Alexander Hamilton, 1757; Bayard Taylor, 1825. 

He brought us wonders of the new and old ; 

We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent 

To him its story-telling secret lent. 
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told. 
His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure, 

In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought; 

From humble home-lays to the heights of thought 
Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure. 

Bayard Taylor. 



12 

John Winthrop, 1588; John Hancock, 1737. 

Sternly faithful to duty, in peril, and suffering, 
and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest of 



JANUARY 

historical epics on the rough soil of New England. 
They lived a truer poetry than Homer or Virgil 
wrote. 

Pawtuckei Falls. 



13 

S. P. Chase, 1808. 

The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, 
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, 
I would not have them otherwise. 

I suffer with no vain pretence 
Of triumph over flesh and sense, 
Yet trust the grievous providence, 

How dark soe'er it seems, may tend. 
By ways I cannot comprehend, 
To some unguessed benignant end ; 

That every loss and lapse may gain 
The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, 
And never cross is borne in vain. 

My Trust. 



14 

What matter though we seek with pain 
The garden of the gods in vain. 
If lured thereby we climb to greet 
Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet? 
8 



JANUARY 

To seek is better than to gain, 
The fond hope dies as we attain ; 
Life's fairest things are those which seem, 
The best is that of which we dream. 

Seeking of the Waterfall. 



15 

Moliere, 1622; Marjorie Fleming, 1803. 

Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower. 

Nor green earth's virgin sod, 
So moved the singer's heart of old 

As these small ones of God. 

The mystery of unfolding life 

Was more than dawning morn, 
Than opening flower or crescent moon 

The human soul new-born ! 

And still to childhood's sweet appeal 

The heart of genius turns, 
And more than all the sages teach 

From lisping voices learns. 

Child-Songs. 



16 



Edmund Spenser, died 1599. 

I LOVE the old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
9 



JANUARY 

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning 
dew. 

Yet vainly in my quiet hours 
To breathe their marvellous notes I try ; 
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 
In silence feel the dewy showers, 
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the 
sky. 

Proem. 

Benjamin Franklin, 1706; George Fuller, 1822. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 

And more to her than gold or grain, 

The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

Our State. 

Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth 
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve ! How passing fair 
Her shapes took color in thy homestead air ! 
How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth ! 
Magician! who from commonest elements 
Called up divine ideals, clothed upon 
By mystic lights soft blending into one 
Womanly grace and child-like innocence. 
Teacher ! thy lesson was not given in vain. 
Beauty is goodness ; ugliness is sin : 
Art's place is sacred : nothing foul therein 
May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane. 
10 



JANUARY 

If rightly choosing is the painter's test, 
Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 

An Artist of the Beautiful. 



Montesquieu, 1689; Daniel Webster, 1782. 

Thou, 
Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 
With all the massive strength that fills 
Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 
New England's stateliest type of man, 
In port and speech Olympian ; 
Whom no one met, at first, but took 
A second awed and wondering look. 
Whose words in simplest homespun clad, 
The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had. 
With power reserved at need to reach 
The Roman forum's loftiest speech. 
Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 
In passion, cool in argument. 
Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes 
As fell the Norse god's hammer blows. 
And failing only when they tried 
The adamant of the righteous side. 

The Lost Occasion. 
James Watt, 1736; Bernardin St. Pierre, 1737. 

All who, by skill and patience, anyhow 
Make service noble, and the earth redeem 
II 



JANUARY 

From savageness. By kingly accolade 

Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made. 

The Problem. 



His simple tale of love and woe 
All hearts had melted, high or low ; — 
A blissful pain, a sweet distress, 
Immortal in its tenderness. 

Chapel of the Hermits, 



20 

N P. Willis, 1807. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes! 
— from the frozen Labrador, — 

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which 
the white bear wanders o'er, — 

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the 
luckless forms below 

In the sunless cold of the lingering night into mar- 
ble statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 

and the quiet lake shall feel 
The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to 

the skater's heel ; 
And the streams which danced on the broken 

rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, 
Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in 

mournful silence pass. 

The Frost Spirit. 
12 



JANUARY 

21 

Oscar II. of Sweden, 1829. 

The pause before the breaking seals 

Of mystery is this ; 
Yon miracle-play of night and day 

Makes dumb its witnesses. 
What unseen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair ? 
What eyes look through, what white wings fan 

These purple veils of air ? 
What Presence from the heavenly heights 

To those of earth stoops down? 
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 

On Ida's snowy crown ! 

Sunset on the Bearcamp. 



22 
Bacon, 1561 ; Lessing, 1729; Byron, 1788. 

What lack of goodly company, 

When masters of the ancient lyre 
Obey my call, and trace for me 

Their words of mingled tears and fire ! 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
And priest and sage, 'with solemn brows austere, 
And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, 
draw near. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 
13 



JANUARY 

William Page, 181 1, 

Wisely and well said the Eastern bard ; 
Fear is easy, but love is hard ; 
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
But he is greatest and best who can 
Worship Allah by loving man. 

The Preacher. 



24 

Frederick the Great, 1712 ; Charles James Fox, 1749. 

Is there, then, no death for a w^ord once spoken ? 
Was never a deed but left its token 
Written on tables never broken ? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
Do pictures of all the ages live 
On Nature's infinite negative ? 

The Palatine. 



25 

Robert Burns, 1759, 

I MATCHED with Scotland's heathery hills 
The sweetbrier and the clover ; 

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
Their wood hymns chanting over. 
14 



JANUARY 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of hf e among the lowly ; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. 

Burns. 

26 

B. R. Haydon, 1786; Thomas Noon Talfourd, 1795. 

Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed 

In thine or in another's day ; 
And, if denied the victor's meed, 

Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay. 

Faith shares the future's promise ; Love's 

Self-offering is a triumph won ; 
And each good thought or action moves 

The dark world nearer to the sun. 

The Voices. 



27 

Mozart, 1756; Emperor William II., 1859. 

Folly and Fear are sisters twain : 

One closing her eyes, 
The other peopling the dark inane 

With spectral hes. 
15 



JANUARY 

Know well, my soul, God's hand controls 

Whate'er thou fearest ; 
Round Him in calmest music rolls 

Whate'er thou hearest. 

What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 

And the end He knoweth, 
And not on a blind and aimless way 

The spirit goeth. 

My Soul and I. 



28 

Charles George Gordon, 1833. 

O HEART of mine, keep patience ! — Looking forth, 
As from the Mount of Vision, I behold. 

Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on 
earth, — 
The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold ! 

And found, at last, the mystic Grail I see, 

Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip 
In sacred pledge of human fellowship ; 
And over all the songs of angels hear, — 
Songs of the love that casteth out all fear, — 
Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 

On a Prayer-Book. 

29 

Emanuel Swedenborg, 1688, 

A MAN remarkable for his practical activities, an 
ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed in all 
16 



JANUARY 

the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive 
mechanician, he has evolved from the hard and 
gross materialism of his studies a system of tran- 
scendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of 
cold and apparently lifeless practical facts beauti- 
ful and wonderful abstractions start forth like blos- 
soms on the rod of the Levite. 

Sweden BORG, 



30 

Walter Savage Landor, 1775. 

To be saved is only this, — 
Salvation from our selfishness; 
From more than elemental fire, — 
The soul's unsanctified desire; — 
From sin itself, and not the pain 
That warns us of its chafing chain. 

The Meeting. 



3^ 

Franz Schubert, 1797. 

Better to stem with heart and hand 

The roaring tide of Hfe, than lie, 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air, 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 
17 



fefiruatp 



THE CLEAR VISION. 

I DID but dream. I never knew 

What charms our sternest season wore. 
Was never yet the sky so blue, 

Was never earth so white before. 
Till now I never saw the glow 
Of sunset on yon hills of snow, 
And never learned the bough's designs 
Of beauty in its leafless lines. 

Did ever such a morning break 

As that my eastern windows see ? 
Did ever such a moonlight take 

Weird photographs of shrub and tree ? 
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
The music of the winter street ? 
Was ever yet a sound by half 
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ? 

O Earth ! with gladness overfraught, 

No added charm thy face hath found; 
Within my heart the change is wrought, 
My footsteps make enchanted ground. 
From couch of pain and curtained room 
Forth to thy light and air I come, 
To find in all that meets my eyes 
The freshness of a glad surprise. 
i8 



FEBRUARY 

Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own 

The wiser love severely kind ; 
Since, richer for its chastening grown, 

I see, whereas I once was bhnd. 
The world, O Father ! hath not wronged 
With loss the life by Thee prolonged ; 
But still, with every added year. 
More beautiful Thy works appear ! 

As Thou hast made thy world without, 

Make Thou more fair my world within; 
Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt 

Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; 
Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
Of life with love to thee and man ; 
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, 
But let my last days be my best ! 
19 



FEBRUARY 
I 

Edmund Quincy, i8oS. 

Better than self-indulgent years 
The outfiung heart of youth, 

Than pleasant songs in idle years 
The tumult of the truth. 

Rest for the weary hands is good, 
And love for hearts that pine, 

But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine. 



My Birthday. 



Candlemas; Hannah More 1745. 

Whatever in love's name is truly done 
To free the bound and lift the fallen one 
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word 
Is not against Him labors for our Lord. 
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore 
For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door. 
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, 
But who shall say which loved the Master best .'* 

By Their Works. 



3 

Mendelssohn, 1809; F. W. Robertson, 1816; Sidney Lanier, 1842. 

A LIFE of beauty lends to all it sees 
The beauty of its thought ; 
20 



FEBRUARY 

And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 
Make glad its way, unsought. 

Sure stands the promise, — ever to the meek 

A heritage is given ; 
Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek 

The righteousness of Heaven! 

The Christian Tourists. 



4 

Josiah Quincy, 1772. 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Snow-Bound. 



5 

James Otis, 1725 ; Sir Robert Peel, 1788. 

Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
Their strife is past, — their triumph won ; 
21 



FEBRUARY 

But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place, — 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

The Moral Warfare. 

6 

Madame de Sevigne, 1626; Queen Anne, 1665. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
Of which the coming life is made, 

And fill our Future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 

The tissue of the Life to be 
We weave with colors all our own, 

And in the field of Destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 

Still shall the soul around it call 

The shadows which it gathered here, 

And, painted on the eternal wall, 
The Past shall reappear. 

Raphael. 



7 

Charles Dickens, 1812. 

Sometimes glimpses on my sight, 
Through present wrong, the eternal right ; 
And, step by step, since time began, 
I see the steady gain of man ; 
22 



FEBRUARY 

That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, 
Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 



Robert Burton, 1577; John Ruskin, 1819. 

The airs of heaven blow o'er me ; 
A glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be, — 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human, 
Solving the riddle old. 
Shaping the Age of Gold ! 

The love of God and neighbor ; 
An equal-handed labor ; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 

My Triumph, 



9 

James Parton, 1822. 

We dwell with fears on either hand, 
Within a daily strife, 
23 



FEBRUARY 

And spectral problems waiting stand 
Before the gates of life. 

The doubts we vainly seek to solve, 

The truths we know, are one ; 
The known and nameless stars revolve 

Around the Central Sun. 

And if we reap as we have sown. 

And take the dole we deal, 
The law of pain is love alone. 

The wounding is to heal. 

The Old Burying-Ground. 



lO 

Charles Lamb, 1775 ; Ary Scheffer, 1795. 

Lo ! in the midst, with the same look he wore, 
Healing and blessing on Gennesaret's shore, 
Folding together, with the all-tender might 

Of his great love, the dark hands and the white, 
Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain. 

Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain. 

On a Prayer-Book. 

II 

Lydia Maria Child, 1802 ; T. A. Edison, 1847. 

And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe, 

Methought, O friend, I saw 
In thy true life of word and work and thought 

The proof of all we sought. 
24 



FEBRUARY 

Did we not witness in the life of thee 

Immortal prophecy ? 
And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod 

An everlasting road ? 

Not for brief days thy generous sympathies, 

Thy scorn of selfish ease ; 
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal 

Thy strong uplift of soul. 

Within the Gate. 



12 



Cotton Mather, 1663; Abraham Lincoln, 1809; Charles Robert 
Darwin, 1809; W. W. Story, 1819; George Meredith, 1828. 

That quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange 

and marvellous things. 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos 

Ovid sings. 

The Garrison of Cape Ann. 



The cloudy sign, the fiery guide. 

Along his pathway ran, 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 

Saw peril, strife, and pain ; 
His was the nation's sacrifice, 
And ours the priceless gain. 

The Emancipation Group. 
25 



FEBRUARY 

John Hunter, 1728. 

Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown 
Question us now from star and stone ; 
Too little or too much we know, 
And sight is swift and faith is slow ; 
The power is lost to self-deceive 
With shallow forms of make-believe. 
We walk at high noon, and the bells 
Call to a thousand oracles. 

The Meeting. 
Edmond About, 1828. 

We share our primal parents' fate, 

And, in our turn and day, 
Look back on Eden's sworded gate 

As sad and lost as they. 

But still for us his native skies 

The pitying Angel leaves, 
And leads through Toil to Paradise 

New Adams and new Eves ! 

A Lay of Old Time. 
S. Weir Mitchell, 1829. 

Not mine to look where cherubim 
And seraphs may not see, 
26 



FEBRUARY 

But nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me. 

The wrong that pains my soul below 

I dare not throne above, 
I know not of His hate, — I know 

His goodness and His love. 

The Eternal Goodness. 

i6 

Philip Melanchthon, 1497; Gaspard de Coligni, 1517. 

Immortal Love, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea ! 

Our outward lips confess the name 

All other names above ; 
Love only knoweth whence it came 

And comprehendeth love. 

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 

The mists of earth away ! 
Shine out, O Light Divine, and show 

How wide and far we stray ! 

Our Master. 



17 

A MIND rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through its graceful bower, 
27 



FEBRUARY 

Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
And stainless in its holy white, 

Unfolding like a morning flower: 
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 

With every breath of feeling woke, 
And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

Memories. 



Galileo, 1564; George Peabody, 1795. 

No gain is lost ; the clear-eyed saints look down 

Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds ; 

Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds 
Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town. 
Truth has charmed life ; the Inward Word survives, 

And, day by day, its revelation brings ; 

Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things 
Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives 

Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, 

And the new gospel verifies the old. 

Adjustment. 



19 

Copernicus, 1473. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
28 



FEBRUARY 

We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart. 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near. 
We watched the first red blaze appear. 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom. 

Snow-Bound. 



20 
David Garrick, 1716; Joseph Jefferson, 1829. 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are flitting. 
When children throng the glowing hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
While in the firelight strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall Hsten. 

Thb Drovers. 

21 

John Henry Newman, 1801. 

By inward sense, by outward signs, 
God's presence still the heart divines ; 
29 



FEBRUARY 

Through deepest joy of Him we learn, 
In sorest grief to Him we turn, 
And reason stoops its pride to share 
The child-hke instinct of a prayer. 

Miriam. 

22 
Washington, 1732; James Russell Lowell, 1819. 

Thank God ! the people's choice was just, 

The one man equal to his trust, 
Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good, 
Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude ! 

The Vow of Washington. 

From purest wells of English undefiled 
None deeper drank than he, the New World's child, 
Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke 
The wit and wisdom of New England folk, 
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide 

laugh 
Provoked thereby might well have shaken half 
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball 
And mine of battle overthrew them all. 

James Russell Lowell. 

23 

G. F. Handel, 1685 ; Josiah Quincy, Jr., 1744. 

Hast thou not, on some week of storm. 
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, 

And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form 
The curtains of its tent of prayer ? 

30 



FEBRUARY 

So, haply, when thy task shall end. 
The wrong shall lose itself in right. 

And all thy week-day darkness blend 
With the long Sabbath of the light ! 

The Voices. 



24 

George William Curtis, 1824. 

The jewels loosen on the branches, 

And lightly, as the soft winds blow, 
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 

And through the clashing of their cymbals 
I hear the old familiar fall 
Of water down the rocky wall. 

Where, from its wintry prison breaking. 
In dark and silence hidden long, 
The brook repeats its summer song ; 

One instant flashing in the sunshine, 
Keen as a sabre from its sheath. 
Then lost again the ice beneath. 

The Pageant. 



25 

And if her life small leisure found 
For feasting ear and eye, 

And Pleasure, on her daily round, 
She passed unpausing by, 
31 



FEBRUARY 

Yet with her went a secret sense 

Of all things sweet and fair, 
And Beauty's gracious providence 

Refreshed her unaware. 

An inborn charm of graciousness 
Made sweet her smile and tone, 

And glorified her farm-wife dress 
With beauty not its own. 

Thh Friend's Burial. 



26 

Arago, 1786 ; Victor Hugo, 1802. 

The mystery dimly understood, 

That love of God is love of good, 

That Book and Church and Day are given 

For man, not God, — for earth, not heaven,— 

The blessed means to holiest ends, 

Not masters, but benignant friends. 

The Meeting. 



27 

H. W. Longfellow, 1807; J. E. Renan, 1823. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude 
Of generous deeds and kindly words ; 

In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, 
Open to sunrise and the birds ! 

A Memorial. 
32 



FEBRUARY 
28 

Montaigne, 1533. 

Slow passed that vision from my view, 
But not the lesson which it taught ; 

The soft, calm shadows which it threw 
Still rested on my thought: 

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, 
Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, 

Plant for their deathless heritage 
The fruits and flowers of time. 

Raphael. 



29 

Rossini, 1792. 

Bland as the morning breath of June 

The southwest breezes play ; 
And, through its haze, the winter noon 

Seems warm as summer's day. 
The snow-plumed Angel of the North 

Has dropped his icy spear ; 
Again the mossy earth looks forth, 

Again the streams gush clear. 

A Dream of Summer. 

33 



THE WIND OF MARCH. 

Up from the sea the wild north wind is blowing 

Under the sky's gray arch ; 
Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing 

It is the wind of March. 

Between the passing and the coming season, 

This stormy interlude 
Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason 

For trustful gratitude. 

Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning 

Of light and warmth to come. 
The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning, 

The earth arisen in bloom ! 

In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking; 

I listen to the sound, 
As to a voice of resurrection, waking 

To life the dead, cold ground. 

Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken 

Of rivulets on their way ; 
I see these tossed and naked treetops darken 

With the fresh leaves of May. 
34 



MARCH 

This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering, 

Invite the airs of Spring, 
A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering. 

The bluebird's song and wing. 

Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow 

This northern hurricane, 
And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow 

Shall visit us again. 

And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture, 

And by the whispering rills. 
Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master 

Taught on his Syrian hills. 

Blow, then, wild wind ! thy roar shall end in 
singing, 
Thy chill in blossoming ; 
Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing 
The healing of the Spring. 
35 



MARCH 



Frederic Chopin, 1809 ; W. D. Howells, 1837. 

The Night is mother of the Day, 

The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 

The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 

Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
For God, who loveth all His works. 

Has left His hope with all ! 

A Dream of Summer. 



Sir Thomas Bodley, 1544. 

Never on custom's oiled grooves 
The world to a higher level moves. 
But grates and grinds with friction hard 
On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
The heart must bleed before it feels. 
The pool be troubled before it heals. 

The Preacher. 



Edmund Waller, 1606; William Godwin, 1756. 

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 
The mystery of another's breast. 
36 



MARCH 

Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow, 
Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. 
Enough to note by many a sign 
That every heart hatli needs Hke thine. 
Pray for its / 

The Prayer-Seeker. 



T. S. King, died 1864. 

The great work laid upon his twoscore years 
Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, 
Who loved him as few men were ever loved, 
We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan 
With him whose life stands rounded and approved 
In the full growth and stature of a man. 
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, 
W^ith your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! 
Wave cheerily still, O banner half-way down, 
From thousand-masted bay and steepled town ! 
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell 
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell 
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. 
O East and West ! O morn and sunset twain 
No more forever! — has he lived in vain 
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told 
Your bridal service from his lips of gold ? 

Thomas Starr King. 

37 



MARCH 
5 

James Madison, 1751. 

With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of 

fire and steam, 
Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him 

like a dream. 
Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward 

far and fast 
The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the 

past. 

Mary Garvin. 



Michelangelo, 1475; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1S06; George du 
JMaurier, 1S34. 

I KNOW not how, in other lands. 

The changing seasons come and go ; 
What splendors fall on Syrian sands. 

What purple lights on Alpine snow! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates ; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



7 

Sir John Herschel, 1792; Sir Edwin Landseer, 1802. 

Enough for me to feel and know 
That He in whom the cause and end. 



MARCH 

The past and future, meet and blend, — 
Who, girt with his Immensities, 
Our vast and star-hung system sees, 
Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
Moves not alone the heavenly quires. 
But waves the spring-time's grassy spires. 
Guards not archangel feet alone, 
But deigns to guide and keep my own ; 
Speaks not alone the words of fate 
Which worlds destroy and worlds create, 
But whispers in my spirit's ear. 
In tones of love, or warning fear, 
A language none beside may hear. 

Questions of Life. 



Sir William Hamilton, 1788. 

So welcome I from every source 
The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to, 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls ; 
Guide, comforter, and inward word. 
The eternal spirit of the Lord ! 

Miriam. 

9 

Mirabeau, 1749; William Cobbett, 1762. 

The wild March rains had fallen fast and long 
The snowy mountains of the North among, 
39 



MARCH 

Making each vale a watercourse, — each hill 
Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill. 

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain. 
Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain, 
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimack 
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



10 

F, von Schlegel, 1772 ; William Etty, 1787. 

Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 
Were the truths of long ago ; 

Let the dead boughs fall away, 
Fresher shall the living grow. 

Calef in Boston. 



II 

' Charles Sumner, died 1874. 

The old traditions of his State, 

The memories of her great and good. 

Took from his life a fresher date. 
And in himself embodied stood. 

Safely his dearest friends may own 
The slight defects he never hid, 

The surface-blemish in the stone 
Of the tall, stately pyramid. 
40 



MARCH 

Suffice it that he never brought 
His conscience to the public mart ; 

But Hved himself the truth he taught, 

White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart. 

Sumner. 



12 

Richard Steele, 1672 ; Bishop Berkeley, 1684; Mary Howitt, 1799. 

Three shades at this moment seem walking her 

strand, 
Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in 

his hand, — 
Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smihng 

serene 
On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. 

One holy name bearing, no longer they need 
Credentials of party, and passwords of creed : 
The new song they sing hath a threefold accord. 
And they own one baptism, one faith, and one 
Lord! 

The Quaker Alumni. 

13 

Joseph Priestley, 1733. 

The wind-harp chooses not the tone 
That through its trembling threads is blown ; 
The patient organ cannot guess 
What hand its passive keys shall press. 
41 



MARCH 

Through wish, resolve, and act, our will 
Is moved by undreamed forces still ; 
And no man measures in advance 
His strength with untried circumstance. 

Overruled. 

14 

Victor Emanuel, 1820; Humbert, 1844. 

As yonder tower outstretches to the earth 
The dark triangle of its shade alone 
When the clear day is shining on its top, 
So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life 
Is but the shadow of God's providence, 
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon ; 
And what is dark below is light in Heaven. 

Tauler. 

15 

John Endicott, died 1665 ; Andrew Jackson, 1767. 

A GRAVE, strong man, who knew no peer 
In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear 
Of God, not man, and for good or ill 
Held his trust with an iron will. 

The King's Missive. 



16 



Caroline Herschel, 1750. 

For ages on our river borders, 

These tassels in their tawny bloom, 
42 



MARCH 

And willowy studs of downy silver, 
Have prophesied of Spring to come. 

For ages have the unbound waters 

Smiled on them from their pebbly hem, 

And the clear carol of the robin 

And song of bluebird welcomed them. 

The First Flowers. 



17 

Madame Roland, 1754. 

I AM: how little more I know! 
Whence came I ? Whither do I go .? 
A centred self, which feels and is ; 
A cry between the silences ; 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life ; 
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Past; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

Questions of Lj.fe. 



18 



Francis Lieber, 1800. 

Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day 
Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. 
In months of sun so live that months of rain 
Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain 
43 



MARCH 

Evil and cherish good, so shall there be 
Another and a happier life for thee. 

Conduct. 



19 

A. P. Peabody, 181 1 ; David Livingstone, 1813. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 

No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; — 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is He ; 
And faith has still its Olivet, 

And love is Galilee. 

Our Master. 



20 



Henrik Ibsen, 1828; Charles William Eliot, 1834. 

Fresh and green from the rotting roots 
Of primal forests the young growth shoots ; . . 
On the ladder of God, which upward leads. 
The step of progress are human needs. 
For his judgments still are a mighty deep, 
And the eyes of his providence never sleep. 

The Preacher. 

44 



MARCH 

21 

J. S. Bach, 1685; Jean Paul Richter, 1763. 

The sweet persuasion of His voice 

Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 

To walk in darkness still ; 

As one who, turning from the light, 
Watches his own gray shadow fall, 

Doubting, upon his path of night, 
If there be day at all ! 

No word of doom may shut thee out, 
No wind of wrath may downward whirl, 

No swords of fire keep watch about 
The open gates of pearl. 

The Answer, 

22 

Van Dyck, 1599; Rosa Bonheur, 1822; Randolph Caldecott, 1846. 

The Traveller said : "If songs have creeds. 

Their choice of them let singers make ; 
But Art no other sanction needs 

Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
It grinds not in the mill of use, 
Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse; 
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, 
And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone." 

The Tent on the Beach. 

45 



MARCH 
23 

p. L. de Laplace, 1749. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 
In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
Well might the wise Athenian scan 

The geometric signs of God, 

The measured order of His plan. 

And India's mystics sang aright 
Of the One Life pervading all, — 
One Being's tidal rise and fall 

In soul and form, in sound and sight, — 
Eternal outjfiow and recall. 

The Over-Heart. 



24 

Joel Barlow, 1755 ; William Morris, 1S34. 

Still, in perpetual judgment, 

I hold assize within, 
With sure reward of holiness, 

And dread rebuke of sin. 

A light, a guide, a warning, 

A presence ever near, 
Through the deep silence of the flesh 

I reach the inward ear. 



My Gerizim and Ebal 
Are in each human soul, 
46 



MARCH 

The still, small voice of blessing, 
And Sinai's thunder-roll. 

The Vision of Echard. 

25 

Antonio Rosmini, 1797. 

It is not ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, 

To show what metes and bounds should stand 

Upon the soul's debatable land, 

And between choice and Providence 

Divide the circle of events ; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate. 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is. 

That He remembereth we are dust ! 

Snow- Bound, 

26 

Count Rumford, 1753 ; Nathaniel Bowditch, 1773. 

Nor fear I aught that science brings 
From searching through material things ; 
Content to let its glasses prove. 
Not by the letter's oldness move, 
The myriad worlds on worlds that course 
The spaces of the universe ; 
Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
The garden of the heart, and talks 
With man, as under Eden's trees. 
In all his varied languages. 

Miriam. 

47 



MARCH 

27 

Ah, well ! — The world is discreet ; 

There are plenty to pause and wait ; 
But here was a man who set his feet 

Sometimes in advance of fate, — 

Plucked off tlie old bark when the inner 

Was slow to renew it, 
And put to the Lord's work the sinner 

When saints failed to do it. 

To G. L. S. 



28 

Samuel Sewall, 1652 ; Thomas Clarkson, 1760. 

Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
He wears the look of a man unbought, 
Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 
Yet touched and softened, nevertheless, 
With the grace of Christian gentleness, . 
True and tender and brave and just, 
That man might honor and woman trust. 

Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
48 



MARCH 

Whom even his errors glorified, 

Like a far-seen, sunht mountain-side 

By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide ! 

The Prophecy of Samuel Sevvall. 



29 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 

Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 

On man and his works has passed the change 

Which needs must be in a century's range. 

The land lies open and warm in the sun, 

Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 

Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain, 

The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain ! 

But the living faith of the settlers old 

A dead profession their children hold ; . . . 

And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant 

But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, — 

A nightly shelter to fold away 

When the Lord should call at the break of day, - 

Solid and steadfast seems to be, 

And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 

The Preacher. 



30 

F. A. G. Tholuck, 1799; John Fiske, 1842. 

Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the 

stone 
In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on, 
49 



MARCH 

Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, 
And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. 

The Quaker Alumni. 



31 

Andrew Marvell, 1621 ; Joseph Haydn, 1732 ; Edward Fitzgerald, 
1809. 

Yet here at least an earnest sense 
Of human right and weal is shown ; 

A hate of tyranny intense, 

And hearty in its vehemence, 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 

O Freedom ! if to me belong 
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 

Still with a love as deep and strong 
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy 

shrine ! 

Proem. 
50 



%m\ 



**The spring comes slowly up this way." 

Christabel. 

'T IS the noon of the springtime, yet never a bird 
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus should 

blow; 
Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, 
On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the 

light. 
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots ; 
And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps. 
Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel 

creeps, 
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers. 
With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst 

into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy 

mouth ; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod ! 
51 



APRIL 
I 

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1786 ; Bismarck, 1815. 

Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood token 
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ; 

Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 
The growing of the grass I hear. 

It is as if the pine-trees called me 
From ceiled room and silent books, 

To see the dance of woodland shadows, 
And hear the song of April brooks ! 

The First Flowers. 



H. C. Andersen. 1805. 

O Thou, who in the garden's shade 
Didst wake Thy weary ones again, 

Who slumbered at that fearful hour 
Forgetful of Thy pain. 

Bend o'er us now, as over them. 

And set our sleep-bound spirits free ; 

Nor leave us slumbering in the watch 
Our souls should keep with Thee ! 

The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon. 
52 



APRIL 
3 

George Herbert, 1593; Washington Irving, 1783. 

We faintly hear, we dimly see, 

In differing phrase we pray; 
But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 

The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

No pride of self Thy service hath, 

No place for me and mine ; 
Our human strength is weakness, death 

Our life, apart from Thine. 

Apart from Thee all gain is loss, 

All labor vainly done ; 
The solemn shadow of Thy Cross 

Is better than the sun. 

Our Master. 



Benjamin Peirce, 1809; James Freeman Clarke, 18 10. 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Aross the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith. 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

Snow-Bouptd. 

53 



APRIL 



F. R. Stockton, 1834; A. C. Swinburne, 1837. 

O SOUL of the springtime, its light and its breath, 
Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this 

death ; 
Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 
The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled. 
Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has 

lain, 
Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, 
And in blooming of flower and budding of tree 
The symbols and types of our destiny see. 

April. 

6 

Raphael, 1483, and died 1520. 

Around the mighty master came 

The marvels which his pencil wrought, 

Those miracles of power whose fame 
Is wide as human thought. 

There drooped thy more than mortal face, 

O Mother, beautiful and mild ! 
Enfolding in one dear embrace 

Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 

The rapt brow of the Desert John; 

The awful glory of that day 
When all the Father's brightness shone 

Through manhood's veil of clay. 

Raphael. 

54 



APRIL 

7 

William Wordsworth, 1770; W. E. Channing, 1780. 

The violet by its mossy stone, 
The primrose by the river's brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosy tints his sunset brought, 

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With Him surviveth all. 

Wordsworth. 



David Rittenhouse, 1732. 

A CHARMED life unknown to death. 
Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 

Her fabled fount and glen 
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine. 
All is that e'er hath been. 

To- 
ss 



APRIL 
9 

Fisher Ames, 1758. 

I WANDERED lonely where the pine-trees made 
Against the bitter East their barricade, 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell 

Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. 

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines 

Lifted their glad surprise. 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, 

And snowdrifts lingered under April skies. 

The Trailing Arbutus. 



10 

C. F. S. Hahnemann, 1755. 

God pity them both ! and pity us all, 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For, of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these : "It might have been ! " 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away ! 

Maud Muller. 
56 



APRIL 
II 

George Canning, 1770; Edward Everett, 1794. 

We have seen, in these years of trial, very great 
sacrifices offered upon the altar of patriotism, — 
wealth, ease, home-love, life itself. But Edward 
Everett did more than this : he laid on that altar 
not only his time, talents, and culture, but his pride 
of opinion, his long-cherished views of policy, his 
personal and political predilections, and his con- 
stitutional fastidiousness of conservatism. With 
a rare and noble magnanimity, he met, without 
hesitation, the demand of the great occasion. All 
honor to him ! 

Edward Everett. 



12 

Henry Clay, 1777. 

Man, who walketh in a show, 
Sees before him, to and fro. 
Shadow and illusion go; 
All things flow and fluctuate, 
Now contract and now dilate ; 
In the welter of this sea, 
Nothing stable is but Thee ! 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 

SI 



APRIL 
13 

Madame Guyon, 1648, 

Not with hatred's undertow 
Doth the Love Eternal flow ; 
Every chain that spirits wear 
Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
And the penitent's desire 
Opens every gate of fire. 

Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound ! 

The Grave by the Lake. 



14 

Horace Bushnell, 1802. 

And all about the softening air 
Of new-born sweetness tells ; 

And the ungathered Mayflowers wear 
The tints of ocean shells. 

The old, assuring miracle 

Is fresh as heretofore; 
And earth takes up its parable 

Of life from death once more. 

The Friend's Burial. 
58 



APRIL 

L. A. Thiers, 1797; J. L. Motley, 1S14; Henry James, 1843. 

Death called him from a need as imminent 
As that from which the Silent William went 
When powers of evil, like the smiting seas 
On Holland's dikes, assailed her Hberties. 
Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung 
The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung 
For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will. 
Above his bier the hearts of men stood still. 
Then, as if set to his dead hps, the horn 
Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn. 
The old voice filled the air ! His last brave word 
Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred. 
Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought, 
As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 

Thiers. 

16 

Sir John Franklin, 17S6; William Chambers, 1800. 

Sad it is the mournful yew-tree 
O'er his slumbers may not wave ; 

Sad it is the English daisy 

May not blossom on his grave. 

But his tomb shall storm and winter 
Shape and fashion year by year, 

Pile his mighty mausoleum, 

Block by block, and tier on tier. 

Lady Franklin. 

59 



APRIL 
17 

William Gilmore Simms, 1806. 

Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er 
all 
Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down 
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, 
The freshening meadows, and the hillsides 
brown ; 
Voice of the west-wind from the hills of 
pine, 
And the brimmed river from its distant fall, 
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude 
Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood, — 
Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, . . . 
Once more, through God's great love, with you I 

share 
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair 

As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, 
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom 
From the dark night and winter of the tomb ! 

Pictures. 



18 



I MOURN no more my vanished years : 

Beneath a tender rain, 
An April rain of smiles and tears. 

My heart is young again. 
60 



APRIL 

The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 
I hear the glad streams run ; 

The windows of my soul I throw 
Wide open to the sun. 

My Psalm. 



19 

Lexington and Concord, 1775. 

They went where duty seemed to call, 
They scarcely asked the reason why ; 
They only knew they could but die, 

And death was not the worst of all ! 

Of man for man the sacrifice, 
All that was theirs to give, they gave. 
The flowers that blossomed from their grave 

Have sown themselves beneath all skies. 

Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, 
And shattered slavery's chain as well ; 
On the sky's dome, as on a bell, 

Its echo struck the world's great hour. 

Lexington. 



20 

W. H. Furness, 1802. 

No offering of my own I have. 
Nor works my faith to prove ; 
6i 



APRIL 

I can but give the gifts He gave. 
And plead His love for love. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
Nor harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care. 

The Eternal Goodness. 



21 

Reginald Heber, 1783; James Martineau, 1805 ; Charlotte Bronte, 
1816 ; H. A. Taine, 1828. 

Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ! 
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, 
The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the Gold of Ophir ! 

Among the Hills. 



22 
Henry Fielding, 1707 ; Madame de Stael, 1766. 

The stream is brightest at its spring. 
And blood is not like wine : 
62 



APRIL 

Nor honored less than he who heirs 
Is he who founds a line. 

Full lightly shall the prize be won, 

If Love be Fortune's spur ; 
And never maiden stoops to him 

Who lifts himself to her. 

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, 

And high and low mate ill ; 
But love has never known a law 

Beyond its own sweet will ! 

Amy Wentworth. 



23 

St. George ; Shakespeare, 1564, and died i6i6. 

And here, to-day, the dead look down. 
The kings of mind again we crown ; 
We hear the voices lost so long-, 
The sage's word, the sibyl's song. 

Here Greek and Roman find themselves 
Alive along these crowded shelves ; 
And Shakespeare treads again his stage, 
And Chaucer paints anew his age. 

As if some Pantheon's marbles broke 
Their stony trance, and lived and spoke. 
Life thrills along the alcoved hall, 
The lords of thought await our call ! 

The Library. 
63 



APRIL 

24 

Anthony Trollope, 1815 ; J. T. Fields, died 1881. 

Keep for us, O friend, where'er 
Thou art waiting, all that here 
Made thy earthly presence dear ; 

Something of thy pleasant past 
On a ground of wonder cast, 
In the stiller waters glassed! 

Keep the human heart of thee ; 
Let the mortal only be 
Clothed in immortality. 

And when fall our feet as fell 

Thine upon the asphodel, 

Let thy old smile greet us well ; 

Proving in a world of bliss 
What we fondly dream in this, — 
Love is one with holiness ! 

In Memory. 



25 

Oliver Cromwell, 1599 ; John Keble, 1792. 

Not untrue that tale of old ! 
Now, as then, the wise and bold 
All the powers of Nature hold 
Subject to their kingly will ; 
64 



APRIL 

From the wondering crowds ashore, 
Treading life's wild waters o'er, 
As upon a marble floor, 
Moves the strong man still. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



26 
David Hume, 171 1 ; Uhland, 17S7; Alice Carj', 1820. 

Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 

The broad horizons of the west ; 

Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the gold 

Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 

Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams 
Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 

But not for her has spring renewed 

The sweet surprises of the wood ; 

And bird and flower are lost to her 

Who was their best interpreter ! 

The Singer, 



27 
S. F. B. Morse, 1791 ; Louis Kossuth, 1806; Herbert Spencer, 1820. 

Type of two mighty continents ! — combining 
The strength of Europe with the warmth and 
glow 

65 



APRIL 

Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shining 
Of Orient splendors over Northern snowl 

To Kossuth. 



From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 

Shall thrill the magic thread ; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 

The fire that wakes the dead. 

The Cable Hymn. 



28 

Earl of Shaftesbury, i8or. 

There are, who, like the Seer of old, 
Can see the helpers God has sent. 

And how hfe's rugged mountain-side 
Is white with many an angel tent! 

They hear the heralds whom our Lord 
Sends down his pathway to prepare ; 

And light, from others hidden, shines 
On their high place of faith and prayer. 

Let such, for earth's despairing ones. 
Hopeless, yet longing to be free. 

Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer : 
" Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see ! " 

The Legend of St. Mark. 

66 



APRIL 
29 

Oliver Ellsworth, 1745. 

Somewhat of goodness, something true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care. 

Miriam. 



30 

First Inauguration of Washington, 1789. 

O City sitting by the Sea ! 

How proud the day that dawned on thee, 
When the new era. long desired, began. 
And, in its need, the hour had found the man ! 

How felt the land in every part 
The strong throb of a nation's heart, 
As its great leader gave, with reverent awe, 
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law! 

Lo ! where with patient toil he nursed 
And trained the new-set plant at first, 
The widening branches of a stately tree 
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea. 
^1 



APRIL 

One people now, all doubt beyond, 
His name shall be our Union-bond; 
We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now 
Take on our lips the old Centennial vow. 

The Vow of Washington. 

68 



MY PLAYMATE 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
Their song was soft and low ; 

The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear ; 

The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 

My playmate left her home, 
And took with her the laughing spring, 

The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin. 

She laid her hand in mine ; 
What more could ask the bashful boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May: 
The constant years told o'er 

Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
But she came back no more. 



69 



MAY 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 

The brown nuts on the hill, 
And still the May-day flowers make sweet 

The woods of Follymill. 

The lilies blossom in the pond, 

The bird builds in the tree, 
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 

The slow song of the sea. 

O playmate in the golden time ! 

Our mossy seat is green, 
Its fringing violets blossom yet, 

The old trees o'er it lean. 

The winds so sweet with birch and fern 

A sweeter memory blow ; 
And there in spring the veeries sing 

The song of long ago. 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood 

Are moaning like the sea, — 
The moaning of the sea of change 

Between myself and thee ! 
70 



MAY 



I 



Joseph Addison, 1672 ; Wellington, 1769. 

Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around 
us ; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain 
to be the inheritance of humanity. 

The Agency of Evil. 



The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods 
Grow misty green with leafing buds. 
And violets and wind-flowers sway, 
Against the throbbing heart of May. 

The Clear Vision. 



2 
J. G. Palfrey, 1796. 

The seasons went 
Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent 
Of their own calm and measureless content. 

Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing 
His song of welcome to the Western spring, 
And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

3 

Nicol6 Macchiavelli, 1469. 

The harp at Nature's advent strung 
Has never ceased to play; 
71 



MAY 

The song the stars of morning sung 
Has never died away. 

The green earth sends her incense up 

From many a mountain shrine ; 
From folded leaf and dewy cup 

She pours her sacred wine. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 

Its transept earth and air, 
The music of its starry march 

The chorus of a prayer. 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 

With which her years began. 
And all her signs and voices shame 

The prayerless heart of man. 

The Worship of Nature. 



4 

J. J. Audubon, 1780; W. H. Prescott, 1796; T. H. Huxley, 1825. 

I DIMLY guess from blessings known 

Of greater out of sight. 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 

His judgments too are right. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

The Eternal Goodness. 
72 



MAY 

5 

Empress Eugenie, 1826. 

Let me find in Thy employ- 
Peace that clearer is than joy ; 
Out of self to love be led 
And to heaven acclimated, 
Until all things sweet and good 
Seem my natural habitude ! 



Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 



His light shines on me from above, 
His low voice speaks within, — 

The patience of immortal love 
Outwearying mortal sin. 

Not mindless of the growing years 

Of care and loss and pain. 
My eyes are wet with thankful tears 

For blessings which remain. 

If dim the gold of life has grown, 

I will not count it dross, 
Nor turn from treasures still my own 

To sigh for lack and loss. 

My Birthday. 

73 



MAY 
7 

Robert Browning, 1812; Johannes Brahms, 1833. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let life be banned or sainted : 
Deeper than written scroll 
The colors of the soul. 

Sweeter than any sung 

My songs that found no tongue ; 

Nobler than any fact 

My wish that failed of act. 

My Triumph. 



8 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, 

And not of sunset, forward, not behind. 

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee 

bring 
All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute. 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance. 

Prelude to Among the Hills. 

74 



MAY 
9 

John Brown, 1800. 

Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil 
good! 

Long live the generous purpose unstained with hu- 
man blood ! 

Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought 
which underlies ; 

Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Chris- 
tian's sacrifice. 

Brown of Ossawatomie. 



Jared Sparks, 1789. 

Why idly seek from outward things, 

The answer inward silence brings ? 

Why stretch beyond our proper sphere 

And age, for that which Hes so near? 

Why climb the far-off hills with pain, 

A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 

In lowliest depths of bosky dells 

The hermit Contemplation dwells. 

A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat. 

And lotus-twined his silent feet, 

Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, 

He sees at noon the stars, whose light 

Shall glorify the coming night. 

Questions of Life, 

75 



MAY 
II 

J. L. Gerome, 1824. 

However full, with something more 
We fain the bag would cram ; 

We sigh above our crowded nets 
For fish that never swam. 

No bounty of indulgent Heaven 

The vague desire can stay ; 
Self-love is still a Tartar mill 

For grinding prayers alway. 

The Common Question. 



12 

Justus von Liebig, 1803 ; D. G. Rossetti, 1828. 

No perfect whole can our nature make ; 
Here or there the circle will break ; 
The orb of life as it takes the light 
On one side, leaves the other in night. 
Never was saint so good and great 
As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate 
For the plea of the Devil's advocate. 

The Preachi 
Alphonse Daudet, 1S40 ; Arthur Sullivan, 1842. 

We gird us bravely to rebuke 

Our erring brother in. the wrong, — 
76 



MAY 

And in the ear of Pride and Power 
Our warning voice is strong. 

Easier to smite with Peter's sword 

Than "watch one hour " in humbling prayer. 
Life's " great things," Hke the Syrian lord, 

Our hearts can do and dare. 

The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon, 



14 

Dante, 1265. 

The song whose thunderous chime 
Eternal echoes render, — 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 
And Milton's starry splendor ! 

Burns. 



Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 
Heard the solemn steps of Time, 

And the low mysterious voices 
Of another chme. 

All the mystery of Being 

Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 

Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, 
Find no place of rest. 

To — 



MAY 

M. W. Balfe, 1808; Montalembert, 1810. 

Sweet in the fresh green meadows 
Sparrow and blackbird sung; 

Above him their tinted petals 
The blossoming orchards hung. 

Around on the wonderful glory 
The minister looked and smiled ; 
" How good is the Lord who gives us 

These gifts from His hand, my child ! 

" Behold in the bloom of apples 
And the violets in the sward 
A hint of the old, lost beauty 
Of the Garden of the Lord ! " 

The Minister's Daughter. 



16 

W. H. Seward, iSoi. 

Nature is not solitude : 
She crowds us with her thronging wood ; 
Her many hands reach out to us, 
Her many tongues are garrulous ; 
Perpetual riddles of surprise 
She offers to our ears and eyes. 

The Meeting. 
78 



MAY 

Edward Jenner, 1749. 

Over the woods and meadow-lands 

A crimson-tinted shadow lay 

Of clouds through which the setting day 

Flung a slant glory far away. 
It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 

It flamed upon the city's panes, 
Smote the white sails of ships that wore 
Outward or in, and glided o'er 

The steeples with their veering vanes ! 



The Preacher. 



18 



John Wilson, 1785. 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sleeping ; 
Around it still the sumachs grow. 

And blackberry-vines are creeping. 

Within, the master's desk is seen. 

Deep scarred by raps official; 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jack-knife's carved initial ; 

The charcoal frescos on its wall ; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

Went storming out to playing ! 

In School-Days. 

79 



MAY 

19 

O FOR boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules. 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell. 
And the ground-mole sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young. 
How the oriole's nest is hung; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow ! 

The Barefoot Boy. 



20 

Balzac, 1799; John Stuart Mill, 1806. 

The years no charm from Nature take ; 

As sweet her voices call, 
As beautiful her mornings break. 

As fair her evenings fall. 

Love watches o'er my quiet ways, 
Kind voices speak my name, 

And lips that find it hard to praise 
Are slow, at least, to blame. 

80 



MAY 

How softly ebb the tides of will ! 

How fields, once lost or won, 
Now lie behind me green and still 

Beneath a level sun ! 

My Birthday. 



21 

Elizabeth Fry, 1780. 

To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone 
The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed. 

And guilt, which only hate and fear had known, 
Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ. 

So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went 
She followed, finding every prison cell 

It opened for her sacred as a tent 

Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well. 

And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal, 
And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw 

How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal. 
And woman's pity kept the bounds of law. 

The Two Elizabeths. 



22 
Richard Wagner, 1813. 

What sings the brook ? What oracle 
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell .'* 
81 



MAY 

What may the wind's low burden be ? 
The meaning of the moaning sea ? 
The hieroglyphics of the stars ? 
'Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? 
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill 
The trick of Nature's cipher still. 

Questions of Life. 



23 

Thomas Hood, 1799 ; Margaret Fuller, 1810. 

Hood, under all his whims and oddities, conceals 
the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of 
the world's wrongs had entered into his soul ; there 
is an undertone of sorrow in his lyrics. 

Mirth and Medicine. 



24 

Queen Victoria, 1819. 

Thicker than water," in one rill 

Through centuries of story 
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
We share with you its good and ill. 

The shadow and the glory. 

To Englishmen. 
82 



MAY 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803. 

The mists above the morning rills 

Rise white as wings of prayer ; 
The altar-curtains of the hills 

Are sunset's purple air. 

The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 

Or low with sobs of pain, — 
The thunder-organ of the cloud, 

The dropping tears of rain. 

With drooping head and branches crossed 

The twilight forest grieves, 
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 

From all its sunlit leaves. 

The Worship of Nature. 



26 

He findeth not who seeks his own, 
The soul is lost that 's saved alone. 
Not on one favored forehead fell 
Of old the fire-tongued miracle. 
But flamed o'er all the thronging host 
The baptism of the Holy Ghost ; 
Heart answers heart: in one desire 
The blending lines of prayer aspire. 
" Where in my name, meet two or three," 
Our Lord hath said, " I there will be ! " 

The Meeting. 
83 



MAY 

27 

Julia Ward Howe, 18 19. 

If it is not permitted us to believe all things, 
we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity 
and death. Temporally and spiritually, the declara- 
tion of inspiration holds good, — ''We are saved by 
hope:' 

Utopian Schemes. 



Rejoice in hope ! The day and night 
Are one with God, and one with them 
Who see by faith the cloudy hem 

Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light! 

ASTR^A AT THE CaPITOL. 



28 

Thomas Moore, 1779; Louis Agassiz, 1807. 

Said the Master to the youth : 
' We have come in search of truth, 
Trying with uncertain key 
Door by door of mystery ; 
We are reaching, through His laws, 
To the garment-hem of Cause. . . . 
As with fingers of the blind. 
We are groping here to find 
What the hieroglyphics mean 
Of the Unseen in the seen. 
What the Thought which underlies 
84 



MAY 

Nature's masking and disguise, 

What it is that hides beneath 

Blight and bloom and birth and death. 

The Prayer of Agassiz. 



29 

Patrick Henry, 1736. 

Dear friends still toiling in the sun, — 
Ye dearer ones who, gone before, 
Are watching from the eternal shore 

The slow work by your hands begun, — 

Rejoice with me ! The chastening rod 
Blossoms with love ; the furnace heat 
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet 

Whose form is as the Son of God ! 

ASTR^A AT THE CaPITOL. 



30 

Decoration Day. 

Our voices take a sober tone, . . . 
And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake 
Of the brave hearts that never more shall beat. 
The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet ! 

To S. E. S. AND H. W. S. 

85 



MAY 

If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
Be liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 

Thy Will be done. 



31 

John A. Andrew, 1818. 

He has done the work of a true man, — 
Crown him, honor him, love him. 

Weep over him, tears of woman, 
Stoop manliest brows above him ! 

No duty could overtask him. 

No need his will outrun; 
Or ever our lips could ask him. 

His hands the work had done. 

To G. L. S. 

86 



Sunt 

JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC 

O DWELLERS in the stately towns, 

What come ye out to see ? 
This common earth, this common sky. 

This water flowing free ? 

As gayly as these kalmia flowers 
Your door-yard blossoms spring ; 

As sweetly as these wild wood birds 
Your caged minstrels sing. 

You find but common bloom and green. 

The rippling river's rune, 
The beauty which is everywhere 

Beneath the skies of June. 

From ceiled rooms, from silent books, 
From crowded car and town, 

Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap, 
We lay our tired heads down. 

Cool, summer wind, our heated brows; 

Blue river, through the green 
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes 

Which all too much have seen. 

87 



JUNE 

For us these pleasant woodland ways 
Are thronged with memories old, 

Have felt the grasp of friendly hands 
And heard love's story told. 

A sacred presence overbroods 
The earth whereon we meet ; 

These winding forest-paths are trod 
By more than mortal feet. 

Old friends called from us by the voice 
Which they alone could hear, 

From mystery to mystery, 
From life to life, draw near. 

More closely for the sake of them 
Each other's hands we press ; 

Our voices take from them a tone 
Of deeper tenderness. 

Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours, 

Alike below, above, 
Or here or there, about us fold 

The arms of one great love ! 



JUNE 



A YEAR has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow; 
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 

And the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet-clover smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 

Telling the Bees. 



John Randolph, 1773 ; Thomas Hardy, 1840. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe, 

The scorn like lightning blasting; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilling tears could summon, 
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 
From lips of life-long sadness ; 

Clear picturings of majestic thought 
Upon a ground of madness ; 

And over all Romance and Song 
A classic beauty throwing, 
89 



JUNE 

And laurelled Clio at his side 
Her storied pages showing. 

Randolph of Roanoke. 

3 

Richard Cobden, 1804; Henry James, Sr. , i8ir. 

Where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 

And ours the grateful service whence 
Comes, day by day, the recompense ; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

Seed-Time and Harvest. 



FOR boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon. 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 

1 was rich in flowers and trees. 
Humming-birds and honey-bees. . . . 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night. 
Whispering at the garden wall. 
Talked with me from fall to fall ; 

90 



JUNE 

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 

The Barefoot Boy. 



5 

Adam Smith, 1723. 

O, WELCOME calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the weary years away; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

Summer by the Lakeside. 



6 

Nathan Hale, 1755; William Francis Bartlett, 1840. 

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage. 
What worthier knight was found 

To grace in Arthur's golden age 
The fabled Table Round ? 

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, 

To welcome and restore ; 
A hand, that all unwilling smote, 

To heal and build once more ! 
91 



JUNE 

A soul of fire, a tender heart 

Too warm for hate, he knew 
The generous victor's graceful part 

To sheathe the sword he drew. 

William Francis Bartlett. 



Care, that kills the cat, may plough 
Wrinkles in the miser's brow, 
Deepen envy's spiteful frown, 
Draw the mouths of bigots down, 
Plague ambition's dream, and sit 
Heavy on the hypocrite. 
Seldom comes that evil guest 
Where the conscience lies at rest, 
And brown health and quiet wit 
Smihng on the threshold sit. 

To My Old Schoolmaster. 

8 

Charles Reade, 1814; J. E. Millais, 1829. 

" More wise," she said, " than those who swarm 
Our hills in middle summer. 
She came, when June's first roses blow, 
To greet the early comer, 

" Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 
On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 
92 



JUNE 

" For health comes sparkling in the streams 
From cool Chocorua stealing : 
There 's iron in our Northern winds; 
Our pines are trees of healing." 

Among the Hills. 



9 

George Stephenson, 1781 ; John Howard Payne, 1791. 

The hills are dearest which our childish feet 
Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most 

sweet 
Are ever those at which our young lips drank, 
Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank : 

Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth- 
light 

Shines round the helmsman plunging through the 
night ; 

And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees 

In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



10 



Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, 
Under thy banks of laurel bloom ; 

Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, 

Sing us the songs of peace and home. 

93 



JUNE 

But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes, 
And the oil of joy for mourning long, 

Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters 
Break into jubilant waves of song ! 

Bring us the air of hills and forests, 
The sweet aroma of birch and pine. 

Give us a waft of the north-wind laden 
With sweetbrier odors and breath of kine ! 

Revisited (1865), 



II 

Ben Jonson, 1574 ; George Wither, 1588. 

O POET rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies ; 
Forward the age of gold, 

The new Saturnian lies. 

The universal prayer 

And hope are not in vain ; 
Rise, brothers ! and prepare 

The way for Saturn's reign. 

ASTK^A. 



12 

Charles Kingsley, i8ig. 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples 
The joy of unborn peoples ! 
94 



JUNE 

Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
Your triumph is my own ! 



Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-reach the good to be. 
And share the victory. 

My Triumph. 



13 

Madame d'Arblay, 1752 ; Thomas Arnold, 1795. 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear ; 
But, grateful, take the good I find, 

The best of now and here. 

I plough no more a desert land. 

To harvest weed and tare ; 
The manna dropping from God's hand 

Rebukes my painful care. 

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 

Aside the toiling oar ; 
The angel sought so far away 

I welcome at my door. 

My Psalm. 

95 



JUNE 

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 181 1. 

To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes 
Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks ; 
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, 
In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, 
With old New England's flavor rife, 
Waifs from her rude idyllic life, 
Are racy as the legends old 
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told ; . . 
To her, who world-wide entrance gave 
To the log-cabin of the slave, 
Made all his want and sorrow known, 
And all earth's languages his own. 

A Greeting, 

15 

Magna Charta, signed 1215. 

O Englishmen ! — in hope and creed, 
In blood and tongue our brothers ! 

We, too, are heirs of Runnymede ; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed 
Are not alone our mother's. 

To Englishmen. 



16 



The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
96 



JUNE 

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 

But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone which should be nigh, 

A loss in all familiar things, 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 

And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 

Snow-Bound. 



17 

John Wesley, 1703 ; Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775. 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they. 
No battle-joy was theirs, who set 
Against the alien bayonet 

Their homespun breasts in that old day. 

Their feet had trodden peaceful ways ; 

They loved not strife, they dreaded pain ; 

They saw not, what to us is plain, 
That God would make man's wrath His praise. 

No seers were they, but simple men; 
Its vast results the future hid : 
The meaning of the work they did 

W^as strange and dark and doubtful then. 

Lexington. 

97 



JUNE 
i8 

Battle of Waterloo, 1815. 

Still, when the sun of summer burns, 
My longing for the hills returns ; 
And northward, leaving at my back 
The warm vale of the Merrimac, 
I go to meet the winds of morn. 
Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, 
Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy 
The hunger of a lowland eye. 

A Summer Pilgrimage. 



19 

Confucius, 551 B. c. ; Pascal, 1623. 

Truth is one ; 
And, in all lands beneath the sun, 
Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
The tokens of its unity. . . 
The angels to our Aryan sires 
Talked by the earliest household fires : 
The prophets of the elder day. 
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 
Read not the riddle all amiss 



Of higher life evolved from this. 



Miriam. 



98 



JUNE 
20 

Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743. 

And not in vain in this soft air 
Shall hard-strung nerves relax, 

Not all in vain the o'erworn brain 
Forego its daily tax. 

Unheeded let the newsboy call, 

Aside the ledger lay : 
The world will keep its treadmill step 

Though we fall out to-day. 

The truants of life's weary school, 

Without excuse from thrift 
We change for once the gains of toil 

For God's unpurchased gift. 

June on the Merrimac. 

21 

Bishop Stubbs, 1825. 

O FEARFUL heart and troubled brain ! 

Take hope and strength from this, 
That Nature never hints in vain, 

Nor prophesies amiss. 

Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave. 

Her lights and airs are given 
Alike to playground and the grave ; 

And over both is Heaven. 

The Old Burying-Gkound. 

99 



JUNE 

22 
Thomas Day, 1748; Giuseppe Mazzini, 1805. 

O Youth and Beauty, loved of all! 

Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams ; 
In broader ways your footsteps fall, 

Ye test the truth of all that seems. 

Give and receive ; go forth and bless 

The world that needs the hand and heart 

Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
No less than Mary's better part. 

At School-Close. 



23 

Midsummer Eve; F. O. C. Darley, 1822. 

Away with weary cares and themes ! 
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams ! 
Leave free once more the land which teems 

With wonders and romances ! 
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, 
Shalt rightly read the truth which Hes 
Beneath the quaintly masking guise 

Of wild and wizard fancies. 

Lo ! once again our feet we set 
On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, 
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 
The roots of spectral beeches ; 
100 



JUNE 

Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er 
Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor, 
And young eyes widening to the lore 
Of faery-folks and witches. 

To My Sister. 



24 

St. John Baptist; John Hampden died, 1643. 

The English revolution of the seventeenth cen- 
tury was prodigal in the development of the real no- 
bility of the mind and heart. Its history is bright 
with the footprints of men whose very names still 
stir the hearts of freemen, the world over, like a 
trumpet peal. Say what we may of its fanaticism, 
laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of 
newly acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall 
now venture to deny that it was the golden age 
of England ? 

John Bunyan. 



25 

O FOR festal dainties spread, 
Like my bowl of milk and bread ; 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
On the doorstone, gray and rude ! 
O'er me, Hke a regal tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold. 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 

lOI 



JUNE 

While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
And, to light the noisy choir, 
Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
I was monarch : pomp and joy 
Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

The Barefoot Boy. 



26 

Philip Doddridge, 1702. 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning, 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and soil 
From off the wings of pleasure. 

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 



Burns. 



27 

Sir William Pepperrell, 1696. 

Still waits kind Nature to impart 
Her choicest gifts to such as gain 

An entrance to her loving heart 

Through the sharp discipline of pain. 
102 



JUNE 

Forever from the Hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall ; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all ! 

Summer by the Lakeside. 



28 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712. 

Untrod by him the path he showed, 
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed 
Of simple faith, and loves of home, 
And virtue's golden days to come. 

But weakness, shame, and folly made 
The foil to all his pen portrayed ; 
Still, where his dreamy splendors shone. 
The shadow of himself was thrown. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 



29 

St. Peter; Rubens, 1577; Celia Thaxter, 1835. 

The letter fails, and systems fall, 
And every symbol wanes ; 

The Spirit over-brooding all 
Eternal Love remains. 

And not for signs in heaven above 
Or earth below they look, 
103 



JUNE 

Who know with John His smile of love, 
With Peter His rebuke. 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin, 
He is His own best evidence, 

His witness is within. 

Our Master. 

Horace Vernet, 1789. 

Did not the gifts of sun and air 

To good and ill alike declare 

The all-compassionate Father's care ? 

In the white soul that stooped to raise 

The lost one from her evil ways. 

Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise ! 

A bodiless Divinity, 

The still small Voice that spake to thee 

Was the Holy Spirit's mystery ! 

Revealed in love and sacrifice. 

The Holiest passed before thine eyes. 

One and the same, in threefold guise. 

The equal Father in rain and sun. 

His Christ in the good to evil done. 

His Voice in thy soul; — and the Three are One ! 

Trinitas. 

104 



3(ulp 

SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 

White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 

O isles of calm ! O dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 

And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 

Transfused through you, O mountain friends ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

1 read each misty mountain sign, 

I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
I lapse into the glad release 
Of Nature's own exceeding peace, 
105 



JULY 



I CALL to mind the summer day, 
The early harvest mowing, 

The sky with sun and clouds at play. 
And flowers with breezes blowing. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn, 
The locust in the haying ; 

And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 
Old tunes my heart is playing. 



Burns. 



2 

Marston Moor, 1644. 

Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun. 
When human rights are staked and won. 

" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 

" The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
Through Jersey snows the march I led. 
My voice Magenta's charges sped." 

The Watchers. 
106 



JULY 
3 

John Singleton Copley, 1737. 

For art and labor, met in truce, 
For beauty made the bride of use, 
We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save. 
The honor proof to place or gold, 
The manhood never bought nor sold ! 

Oh make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong ; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of Thy righteous law ; 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old ! 

Centennial Hymn. 



4 

Independence Day ; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804; Garibaldi, T807. 

We give thy natal day to hope, 
O Country of our love and prayer ! 

Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and air. 

Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 
By God's grace only stronger made, 

In future tasks before thee set 
Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 



107 



JULY 

With peace that comes of purity 
And strength to simple justice due, 

So runs our loyal dream of thee ; 
God of our fathers ! — make it true. 

Our Country. 



5 

D. G. Farragut, 1801 ; " George Sand," 1804. 

Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm, 
Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm, 
Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm 
To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel 
Of labor, winding off from memory's reel 
A golden thread of music. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

6 

John Huss, 1373 ; John Flaxman, 1755. 

The path of life we walk to-day 

Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ; 

We need the shadowing rock, as they, — 
We need, like them, the guides of God. 

God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, 
To lead us o'er the desert sand ! 

God give our hearts their long desire, 
His shadow in a weary land ! 

"The Rock " in El Ghor. 
108 



JULY 



GooD-BY to pain and care ! I take 

Mine ease to-day : 
Here where these sunny waters break, 
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts 
away. 

I draw a freer breath — I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves in the sun — the white-winged gleam 
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam — 
And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind 
free. ^ 

Hampton Beach. 



8 

Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790. 

In common ways, with common men, 

He served his race and time 
As well as if his clerkly pen 

Had never danced to rhyme. 

If, in the thronged and noisy mart, 

The Muses found their son, 
Could any say his tuneful art 
A duty left undone ? 

Fitz-Greene Halleck. 
109 



JULY 
9 

Henry Hallam, 1777- 

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 

By all things near and far ; 
The ocean looketh up to heaven. 

And mirrors every star. 

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 

As kneels the human knee, 
Their white locks bowing to the sand, 

The priesthood of the sea ! 

They pour their glittering treasures forth, 

Their gifts of pearl they bring, 
And all the listening hills of earth 

Take up the song they sing. 

The Worship of Nature. 



10 

John Calvin, 1509; Robert Chambers, 1802. 

I REVERENCE old-time faith and men, 
But God is near us now as then ; 
His force of love is still unspent. 
His hate of sin as imminent; 
And still the measure of our needs 
Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds. 

The Meeting. 
IIO 



JULY 
II 

John Quincy Adams, 1767. 

O FOR the tongue of him who lies at rest 

In Quincy 's shade of patrimonial trees, — 
Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best. 

To Kossuth. 

He rests with the immortals ; his journey has been 

long: 
For him no wail of sorrow, but a pcean full and 

strong ! 
So well and bravely has he done the work he found 

to do, 
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever 

true. 

John Quincy Adams. 



12 

H. D. Thoreau, 1817. 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear. 

Like Apollonius of old, 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told. 

Or Hermes who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said. 

Snow-Bound. 
Ill 



JULY 

13 

And if the husband or the wife 
In home's strong light discovers 

Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 

For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living ; 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

Among the Hills. 
John Gibson Lockhart, 1794. 

" Hands that ope but to receive 
Empty close ; they only live 
Richly who can richly give. 

" Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, 
" Love is sweet in any guise ; 
But its best is sacrifice ! 



" He who, giving, does not crave 
Likest is to Him who gave 
Life itself the loved to save. 



JULY 

Love, that self-forgetful gives, 
Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, 
Late or soon its own receives." 

The Two Loves. 



15 

Rembrandt, 1606. 

They sat and watched in idle mood 

The gleam and shade of lake and wood, — 

The beach the keen light smote. 

The white sail of a boat, — 

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, 
In sweetness, not in music, dying, — 
Hardhack, and virgin's-bower. 
And white-spiked clethra-flower. 

The Maids of Attitash. 



16 

Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1723. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home ; 

We need but eye and ear 
In all our daily walks to trace 
The outHnes of incarnate grace. 

The hymns of gods to hear ! 

To 

113 



JULY 

Isaac Watts, 1674. 

Sometimes comes to soul and sense 
The feeling which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 
The breath of a diviner air 
Blows down the answer of a prayer. . . . 
With smile of trust and folded hands, 
The passive soul in waiting stands 
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 
The One true Life its own renew. 

The Meeting. 



18 

George Fox, 1624; Gilbert White, 1720; W. M. Thackeray, 1811. 

O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 

Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, 
The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 

The old sphere-music which the Samian heard ! 

Truth which the sage and prophet saw. 
Long sought without, but found within, 

The Law of Love beyond all law. 

The Life o'erfl coding mortal death and sin ! 
114 



JULY 

Shine on us with the light which glowed 
Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way, 

Who saw the Darkness overflowed 

And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. 

The Shadow and the Light. 



19 

A STRANGER now, a world-worn man, 

Is he who bears my name ; 
But thou, methinks, whose mortal life 

Immortal youth became, 

Art evermore the same. 

Thou art not here, thou art not there, ' 

Thy place I cannot see ; 
I only know that where thou art 

The blessed angels be. 

And heaven is glad for thee. 

Look forth once more through space and time. 

And let thy sweet shade fall 
In tenderest grace of soul and form 

On memory's frescoed wall. 

A shadow, and yet all ! 

A Sea Dream. 

20 

John Sterling, 1S06. 

Methinks the spirit's temper grows 
Too soft in this still air ; 
IIS 



JULY 

Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 
Of needed watch and prayer. 

The bark by tempest vainly tossed 
May founder in the calm, 

And he who braved the polar frost 
Faint by the isles of balm. 



My Birthday. 



21 

Robert Burns died, 1796. 

To-day be every fault forgiven 

Of him in whom we joy ! 
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven 

And leave the earth's alloy. 
Be ours his music as of spring, 

His sweetness as of flowers, 
The songs the bard himself might sing 

In hoHer ears than ours. 

The Memory of Burns. 



22 

When heats as of a tropic clime 

Burned all our inland valleys through, 

Three friends, the guests of summer time, 

Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew. 

Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed 

With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, 
116 



JULY 

Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms 
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland 
farms. 

They rested there, escaped awhile 

From cares that wear the life away, 
To eat the lotus of the Nile 

And drink the poppies of Cathay, — 
To fling their loads of custom down, 
Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown, 
And in the sea-waves drown the restless pack 
Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their 
track. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



23 

Charlotte Cushman, 18 16. 

Our common Master did not pen 
His followers up from other men ; . . . 
His sermons were the healthful talk 
That shorter made the mountain-walk, 
His wayside texts were flowers and birds, . 
Where mingled with His gracious words 
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 
And ripple-wash of Galilee. 

The Meeting. 



117 



JULY 
24 

Alexandre Dumas, 1803. 

What heed I of the dusty land 

And noisy town ? 
I see the mighty deep expand 
From its white line of glimmering sand 
To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts 
down ! 

In listless quietude of mind, 

I yield to all 
The change of cloud and wave and wind 
And passive on the flood reclined, 
I wander with the waves, and with them rise and 
fall. 

Hampton Beach. 



25 
St. James. 

We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave 
Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, 
Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. 

What asks our Father of His children, save 

Justice and mercy and humility, 
A reasonable service of good deeds, 
Pure living, tenderness to human needs, 

Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see 
118 



JULY 

The Master's footprints in our daily ways? 
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, 
But the calm beauty of an ordered life 
Whose very breathing is unworded praise ! — 
A life that stands as all true lives have stood, 
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 

Requirement, 

26 

Winthrop Mackworth Praed, 1802. 

Thanks for thy gift 
Of ocean flowers, 

Born where the golden drift 

Of the slant sunshine falls 

Down the green, tremulous walls 
Of water, to the cool still coral bowers, 
Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, 

God's gardens of the deep 

His patient angels keep ; 
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude 

With fairest forms and hues. 

To Avis Keene. 
[_0n Receiving a Basket of Sea-Mosses.] 

27 

Thomas Campbell, 1777; Atlantic Telegraph completed, 1866. 

From world to world his couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire ; 

The angel of His stormy sky 
Rides down the sunken wire. 
119 



JULY 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Beneath the deep so far, 
The bridal robe of earth's accord, 

The funeral shroud of war ! 

For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall 
Space mocked and time outrun ; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one ! 

The Cable Hymn. 



28 

Alexandre Dumas, the Younger, 1824. 

Need has its rights, necessity its claim. 
Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame 
Test well the charity suffering long and kind. 
The home-pressed question of the age can find 
No answer in the catch-words of the blind 
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none 
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone. 

The Problem. 



29 

Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805. 

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 
Alike on Nature's love rely ; 
And equal seems to live or die. 
120 



JULY 

Assured that He whose presence fills 
With light the spaces of these hills 
No evil to His creatures wills, 

The simple faith remains, that He 
Will do, whatever that may be, 
The best alike for man and tree. 

What mosses over one shall grow, 
What light and life the other know, 
Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 

Summer by the Lakeside. 



30 

Samuel Rogers, 1763. 

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of Thy peace. 

Breathe through the heats of our desire 

Thy coolness and Thy balm ; 
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ; 
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, 

O still, small voice of calm ! 

The Brewing of Soma. 
121 



JULY 
31 

George Henry Thomas, 1816. 

And light is mingled with the gloom, 

And joy with grief ; 
Divinest compensations come, 
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom 

In sweet relief. 

Who murmurs that in these dark days 

His lot is cast ? 
God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 

Shall rise at last. 

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand ! 

Nor stint, nor stay ; 
The years have never dropped their sand 
On mortal issue vast and grand 

As ours to-day. 

Anniversary Poem (1863). 
122 



SCuguiSft 

PRELUDE TO AMONG THE HILLS 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod. 
And the red pennons of the cardinal flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heHotrope, 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 
123 



AUGUST 



Lammas; George Ticknor, 1791 ; Cavour, 1810. 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 
Of summer sights my languid eye ; 

Beyond the dusty village bounds 

I loiter in my daily rounds, 
And in the noontime shadows lie. 

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, 

The bird swings on the ripened wheat, 
The long green lances of the corn 
Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
The locust shrills his song of heat. 

The Summons. 



Joseph Sturge, 1793 ; E. A. Freeman, 1823 ; F. Marion Crawford, 

1854. 

Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, 

Who in the vilest saw 
Some sacred cr\'pt or altar of a temple 

Still vocal with God's law ; 

Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, 

But a fine sense of right, 
And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion 

Straight as a line of light. 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge. 
124 



AUGUST 
3 

Juliana Horatia Ewing, 1841. 

Our sweet illusions only die 
Fulfilling love's sure prophecy; 
And every wish for better things 
An undreamed beauty nearer brings. 

For fate is servitor of love ; 
Desire and hope and longing prove 
The secret of immortal youth, 
And Nature cheats us into truth. 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 



Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 ; Edward Irving, 1792. 

The glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he 
was through early prejudice and defective educa- 
tion, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling 
with the light of a better day, — that hope and that 
faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, 
and without which it would be dark and dead, can- 
not be in vain. 

The World's End. 

5 

The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain : 
The blow most dreaded falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain ; 
125 



AUGUST 

And wrongs of man to man but make 

The love of God more plain. 
As through the shadowy lens of even 
The eye looks farthest into heaven 
On gleams of star. and depths of blue 
The glaring sunshine never knew ! 

All 's Well. 



6 

F^nelon, 1651 ; Tennyson, i8og. 

Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more 
Than solemn rite or sacred lore, 
The holy life of one who trod 
The foot-marks of the Christ of God ! 

He lived the Truth which reconciled 
The strong man Reason, Faith the child ; 
In him belief and act were one, 
The homilies of duty done ! 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 



7 • 

Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795. 

And there, on breezy morns, they saw 
The fishing-schooners outward run, 

Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw 
Turned white or dark to shade and sun, 
126 



AUGUST 

Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
They watched the spectral mirage play, 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the 
sky. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



A GLIMMER of heat was in the air, — 
The dark green woods were still ; 

And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud 
Hung over the western hill. 

Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 

Above the wilderness, 
As some dark world from upper air 

Were stooping over this. 

At times the solemn thunder pealed, 

And all was still again. 
Save a low murmur in the air 

Of coming wind and rain. 

The Exiles. 



9 

Izaak Walton, 1593 ; John Dryden, 1631. 

Passages 
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh 
As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire, 
127 



AUGUST 

Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind 

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair 

Of the sage fisher. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



lO 



Life shall on and upward go ; 

Th' eternal step of Progress beats 

To that great anthem, calm and slow, 

Which God repeats. 

Take heart ! the Waster builds again, — 

A charmed life old Goodness hath; 
The tares may perish, but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night : 
Wake thou and watch ! the world is gray 
With morning light ! 

The Reformer. 



II 

Jeffries Wyman, 1814. 

White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway 
winds 
Before me ; dust is on the shrunken grass. 
And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass ; 
128 



AUGUST 

Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, 
Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, 

While mounting with his dog-star high and 
higher 
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds 

The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. 
Between me and the hot fields of his South 
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth, 
Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight, 

As if the burning arrows of his ire 
Broke as they fell, and shattered into light. 

Pictures. 

12 

Robert Southey, 1774. 

Faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 
The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 

Thy nature, which, through fire and flood, 
To place or gain finds out its way, 

Hath power to seek the highest good, 
And duty's holiest call obey ! 

The Voices. 

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 
129 



AUGUST 

Unspoken homilies of peace 

Her daily life is preaching; 
The still refreshment of the dew 

Is her unconscious teaching. 

Her presence lends its warmth and health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

Among the Hills. 



14 

Not vain the vision which the prophets saw, 
Skirting with green the fiery waste of war, 
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft and calm 
On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading palm. 
Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long have trod, 
The great hope resting on the truth of God, — 
Evil shall cease and Violence pass away. 
And the tired world breathe free through a long 
Sabbath day. 

The Peace Convention. 



15 

Napoleon, 1769; Walter Scott, 1771 ; Thomas De Quincey, 1785. 

Human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow 
and the sin. 
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our 
own akin ; 

130 



AUGUST 

And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our 

mothers sung. 
Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always 

young. 

Mary Garvin. 



i6 



Lavoisier, 1743. 

On my cheek I feel the western wind, 
And hear it telling to the orchard trees, 
And to the faint and flower- forsaken bees. 
Tales of fair meadows, green with constant 
streams, 

And mountains rising blue and cool behind, 
Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams. 

And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined. 

So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares 

Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned. 

Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs 
Of a serener and a holier land, 
Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. 

Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, 

Blow from the eternal hills ! make glad our earthly 

way! 

Pictures. 



AUGUST 

17 

Fredrika Bremer, 1801. 

Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies 
Meet and mingle with our mirth. 

And o'er weary spirits keeping 

Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, 

Shine they like thy sun of summer 
Over midnight vale and hill. 

To Fredrika Bremer. 



18 



T. W. Parsons, 1819 ; Emperor Francis Joseph, 1830. 

One, with years grown wiser, said : 
" So, always baffled, not misled, 
We follow where before us runs 
The vision of the shining ones. 

" Not where they seem their signals fly, 
Their voices while we listen die ; 
We cannot keep, however fleet, 
The quick time of their winged feet. 

" From youth to age unresting stray 
These kindly mockers in our way ; 
Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, 
To something better than themselves ? " 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 
132 



AUGUST 

John Woolman, 1720. 

Earnest toil and strong endeavor 

Of a spirit which within 
Wrestles with familiar evil 

And besetting sin ; 

And without, with tireless vigor, 
Steady heart, and weapon strong, 

In the power of truth assaiHng 
Every form of wrong. 

O'er life's humblest duties throwing 
Light the earthling never knew, 

Freshening all its dark waste places 
As with Hermon's dew. 

Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, 
Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 

Living warmth and starry brightness 
Round that poor man's head. 

To . 

[IVith a copy of IVoolman's Jourtial.^ 



20 



Robert Herrick, 1591. 

With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight 
From hfe's glad morning to its solemn night ; 
133 



AUGUST 

Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show 
There 's Light above me by the Shade below. 

Inscription on a Sun-Dial. 



21 

Jules Michelet, 1798; John Tyndall, 1820. 

Now in the west, the heavy clouds 

Scattered and fell asunder. 
While feebler came the rush of rain. 

And fainter growled the thunder. 

And through the broken clouds, the sun 

Looked out serene and warm. 
Painting its holy symbol-light 

Upon the passing storm. 

Oh, beautiful ! that rainbow span. 

O'er dim Crane-neck was blended ; — 

One bright foot touched the eastern hills. 
And one with ocean blended. 

The Exiles, 



22 



Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black. 
Stooped low upon the darkening main, 

Piercing the waves along its track 
With the slant javelins of rain. 
134 



AUGUST 

And when. west-wind and sunshine warm 
Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, 
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers 
Where the green buds of waves burst into white 
froth flowers. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



23 

Cuvier, 1769. 

Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 

The dint of rain and small bird's track : 

Who knows but that my idle verses 
May leave some trace by Merrimac ! 

So, when this fluid age we live in 

Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, 

Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle 
The savans of the coming time : 

And, following out their dim suggestions, 
Some idly-curious hand may draw 

My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. 

The First Flowers. 



135 



AUGUST 
24 

William Wilberforce, 1759. 

The truths ye urge are borne abroad 

By every wind and every tide ; 
The voice of Nature and of God 

Speaks out upon your side. 

The weapons which your hands have found 
Are those which Heaven itself has wrought, 

Light, Truth, and Love ; your battle-ground 
The free, broad field of Thought. 

To THE Reformers of England. 



25 
C. K. J. von Bunsen, 1791; Bret Haite, 1839. 

And when along the line of shore 

The mists crept upward chili and damp, 
Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor 

Beneath the flaring lantern lamp. 
They talked of all things old and new. 
Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do ; 
And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent, 
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent. 

The Tent on the Beach. 
136 



AUGUST 
26 

Sir Robert Walpole, 1676 ; Prince Albert, 1819. 

We search the world for truth ; we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
And, weary seekers of the best. 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the Book our mothers read, 

Miriam. 



27 

Hegel, 1770. 

Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies, 

Seen through our shadows of offence. 
And drown with our poor childish cries 
The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 

And still we love the evil cause. 

And of the just effect complain : 
We tread upon life's broken laws, 
And murmur at our self-inflicted pain. 

The Shadow and the Light. 



137 



AUGUST 
28 

John Locke, 1632; Goethe, 1749; Tolstoi, 1828. 

The soul itself its awful witness is. 

Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," 

And so offend the conscious One within, 

Whose ear can hear the silences of sin 

Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see 

The secret motions of iniquity. 

Nor in thy folly say, " I am alone." 
For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne. 
The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still. 
To note thy act and thought ; and as thy ill 
Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, 
The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each. 

The Inward Judge. 



29 

F. D. Maurice, 1805 ; O. W. Holmes, 1809. 

His still the keen analysis 

Of men and moods, electric wit. 

Free play of mirth and tenderness 
To heal the slightest wound from it. 

And his the pathos touching all 
Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 

Its hopes and fears, its final call 
And rest beneath the violets. 
138 



AUGUST 

His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, 

The wisdom of the latter days, 
And tender memories of the old. 

Our Autocrat (1879). 



30 

Climbing a path which leads back never more 
We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer ; 
Now, face to face, we greet him standing here 

Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore ! 

Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day 
Is closing and the shadows colder grow, 
His genial presence, like an afterglow, 

Following the one just vanishing away. 

Long be it ere the table shall be set 
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, 
And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat 

His own sweet songs that time shall not forget. 

Waiting with us the call to come up higher, 

Life is not less, the heavens are only nigher ! 

O. W. Holmes on his Eightieth Birthday. 



31 

John Bunyan died, 1688. 

The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of 

Life " glided peacefully before him, fringed " on 

either side with green trees, with all manner of 

fruit," and leaves of healing, with " meadows beau- 

139 



AUGUST 

tified with lilies, and green all the year long;" he 
saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sun- 
shine, overhung with gardens and orchards and 
vineyards ; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, 
with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its music 
of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves 
through which walked the Shining Ones, silver- 
winged and beautiful. 



What were bars and bolts and prison walls to 
him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose 
ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of 
the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted 
to its golden gates, from the black and bitter river, 
with the sounding trumpeters, the transfigured harp- 
ers with their crowns of gold, the sweet voices of 
angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, 
and the songs of the redeemed ones ? 

John Bunyan. 
140 



September 

SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP . 

A GOLD fringe on the purpling hem 

Of hills the river runs 
As down its long green valley falls 

The last of summer's suns. 
Along its tawny gravel-bed 

Broad-flowing, swift, and still, 
As if its meadow levels felt 

The hurry of the hill, 
Noiseless between its banks of green 

From curve to curve it shps ; 
The drowsy maple-shadows rest 

Like fingers on its lips. 

Touched by a hght that hath no name, 

A glory never sung, 
Aloft on sky and mountain wall 

Are God's great pictures hung. 
How changed the summits vast and old ! 

No longer granite-browed, 
They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 

Is softer than the cloud ; 
The valley holds its breath ; no leaf 

Of all its elms is twirled : 
The silence of eternity 

Seems falling on the world. 
141 



SEPTEMBER 

Slow fades the vision of the sky, 

The golden water pales, 
And over all the valley-land 

A gray- winged vapor sails. 
I go the common way of all ; 

The sunset fires will burn, 
The flowers will blow, the river flow. 

When I no more return. 
No whisper from the mountain pine 

Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
The stranger, treading where I tread, 

Of him who loved them well. 

But beauty seen is never lost, 

God's colors all are fast ; 
The glory of this sunset heaven 

Into my soul has passed, — 
A sense of gladness unconfined 

To mortal date or clime ; 
As the soul liveth, it shall live 

Beyond the years of time. 
Beside the mystic asphodels 

Shall bloom the home-born flowers, 
And new horizons flush and glow 

With sunset hues of ours. 
142 



SEPTEMBER 
I 

L. H. Sigourney, 1791. 



September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise 
and cloud, sun and rain, — I for one am contented 
with them. They fill my heart with a sense of 
beauty. 

The World's End. 



She sang alone, ere womanhood had known 
The gift of song which fills the air to-day : 

Tender and sweet, a music all her own 
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray. 

Lydia H. Sigourney. 
{Inscription in Christ Churchy Hart/ord.] 



John Howard, 1726. 

Fringing the stream, at every turn 
Swung low the waving fronds of fern ; 
From stony cleft and mossy sod 
Pale asters sprang, and goldenrod. 

And still the waters sang the sweet, 
Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, 
And found in rock and root the keys 
Of its beguiling melodies. 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 



SEPTEMBER 



Mary Whittier Caldwell, 1806. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside ; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 
O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest. 

Snow-Bound. 



Phoebe Gary, 1824. 

Years since (but names to me before), 
Two sisters sought at eve my door ; 
Two song-birds wandering from their nest, 
A gray old farmhouse in the West. 

How fresh of life the younger one. 
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun.! 
Her gravest mood could scarce displace 
The dimples of her nut-brown face. 

Wit sparkled on her lips not less 
For quick and tremulous tenderness ; 
144 



SEPTEMBER 

And, following close her merriest glance, 
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance. 

The Singer. 



5 

Meyerbeer, 1791 ; Archbishop Trench, 1807, 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 
And vexed the vales with raining, 

And all the woods were sad with mist, 
And all the brooks complaining. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 

The mountain veils asunder, 
And swept the valleys clean before 

The besom of the thunder. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh greenness. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

Among the Hills. 



SEPTEMBER 
6 

Lafayette, 1757. 

If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could 
we so admire its cascade over the rocks ? Were 
there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining 
through them in its still calm purity ? 

The Beautiful. 



7 

John Greenleaf Whittier died, 1892. 

When on my day of life the night is falling, 
And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, 

I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
My feet to paths unknown, 

Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant. 
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay ; 

O Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 
Be Thou my strength and stay ! 

Be near me when all else is from me drifting ; 

Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and 
shine. 
And kindly faces to my own uplifting 

The love which answers mine. 

At Last. 
146 



SEPTEMBER 
8 

Ariosto, 1474; A. W. Schlegel, 1767. 

I HAVE but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit 
Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 
Nor street of shining gold. 

Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned. 

And both forgiven through Thy abounding 
grace — 

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto my fitting place. 

Some humble door among Thy many mansions. 
Some sheltering shade where sin and striving 
cease. 
And flows forever through heaven's green expan- 
sions 
The river of Thy peace. 

At Last. 



9 

Thomas Hutchinson, 171 1; J. H. Shorthouse, 1834. 

I PRAY the prayer of Plato old : 
God make thee beautiful within, 

And let thine eyes the good behold 
In everything save sin. 
147 



SEPTEMBER 

Imagination held in check 

To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ; 
Thy Reason, at the frown or beck 

Of Conscience, loose or bind. 

My Namesake. 



10 



Mungo Park, 1771 ; Philip Gilbert Hamerton, 1834. 

Not alone in tones of awe and power 
He speaks to man ; 
The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower 
His rainbows span ; 
And where the caravan 
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air 
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there. 

He gives the weary eye 
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, 
And on its branches dry 
Calls out the acacia's flowers. 

To Avis Keene. 



II 

James Thomson, 1700. 

Nothing before, nothing behind ; 

The steps of Faith 
Fall on the seeming void, and find 

The rock beneath. 
148 



SEPTEMBER 

The Present, the Present is all thou hast 

For thy sure possessing ; 
Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 

Till it gives its blessing. 

My Soul and I. 



12 

Charles Dudley Warner, 1829. 

From the clefts of mountain rocks, 
Through the dark of lowland firs. 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishers ! 

And the fisher in his skiff, 

And the hunter on the moss, 
Hear their call from cape and cliff, 

See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 
Twilight of the clustered pines. 

In their faces rarely seen 
Beauty more than mortal shines. 

The Vanishers. 



13 

James Shirley, 1596. 

Here, though unreached the goal we sought, 
Its own reward our toil has brought: 
149 



SEPTEMBER 

The winding water's sounding rush, 
The long note of the hermit thrush, 

The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond 
And river track, and, vast, beyond 
Broad meadows belted round with pines. 
The grand uplift of mountain lines ! 

So failure wins ; the consequence 
Of loss becomes its recompense ; 
And evermore the end shall tell 
The unreached ideal guided well. 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 



14 

John Harvard died, 1638; Alexander von Humboldt, 1769. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 

How through each pass and hollow streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 

From far celestial fountains, — 
The great sun flaming through the rifts 

Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

Among the Hills. 



SEPTEMBER 
IS 

James Fenimore Cooper, 1789; J. G. Percival, 1795. 

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, 

And, turning from familiar sight and sound, 
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast 

A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, 
Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round 
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast ; 
And that which history gives not to the eye, 
The faded coloring of Time's tapestry. 
Let Fancy with her dream-dipped brush supply. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 

16 

Samuel Adams, 1722; Francis Parkman, 1823. 

O Painter of the fruits and flowers, 

We own Thy wise design, 
Whereby these human hands of ours 

May share the work of Thine ! 

Apart from Thee we plant in vain 

The root and sow the seed ; 
Thy early and Thy later rain, 

Thy sun and dew we need. 

Our toil is sweet with thankfulness. 

Our burden is our boon ; 

The curse of Earth's gray morning is 

The blessing of its noon. 

Garden. 



SEPTEMBER 

Samuel Hopkins, 1721. 

Honor to the true man ever, who takes his life 
in his hands, and, at all hazards, speaks the word 
which is given him to utter, whether men will hear 
or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise 
or censure, gratitude or hatred. It well may be 
doubted whether on that Sabbath day the angels of 
God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked 
upon a nobler spectacle than that of the minister 
of Newport, rising up before his slave-holding con- 
gregation, and demanding, in the name of the High- 
est, the " deliverance of the captive, and the open- 
ing of prison doors to them that were bound." 

Samuel Hoi-kins. 



18 

Samuel Johnson, 1709; Joseph Story, 1779. 

Farewell! these smiling hills must wear 

Too soon their wintry frown. 
And snow-cold winds from off them shake 

The maple's red leaves down. 
But I shall see a summer sun 

Still setting broad and low ; 
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, 

The golden water flow. 
A lover's claim is mine on all 

I see to have and hold, — 
152 



SEPTEMBER 

The rose-light of perpetual hills, 
And sunsets never cold ! 

Sunset on the Bearcamp. 



19 

Hartley Coleridge, 1796. 

Has life's infancy only lieen provided for, and 
beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there 
no play-ground for the soul's youth, no broad fields 
for its manhood ? 

Scottish .Reformers. 



20 



The river wound as it should wind ; 

Their place the mountains took ; 
The white torn fringes of their clouds 

Wore no unwonted look. 

Yet ne'er before that river's rim 
Was pressed by feet of mine, 

Never before mine eyes had crossed 
That broken mountain line. 

A presence, strange at once and known, 
Walked with me as my guide ; 

The skirts of some forgotten life 
Trailed noiseless at my side. 
153 



SEPTEMBER 

Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 

Or glimpse through aeons old ? 
The secret which the mountains kept 

The river never told. 

A Mystery. 

21 

St. Matthew; Savonarola, 1452. 

Suffice it now. — In time to be 
Shall holier altars rise to Thee, — 
Thy Church our broad humanity ! 

White flowers of love its walls shall climb, 
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

A sweeter song shall then be heard, — 
The music of the world's accord 
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word ! 

That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
One hope, one faith, one love, restore 
The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 

Hymn. 

22 

Michael Faraday, 1791 ; Dr. John Brown, 1810. 

We need love's tender lessons taught 

As only weakness can ; 
God hath His small interpreters ; 

The child must teach the man. 
154 



SEPTEMBER 

We wander wide through evil years, 

Our eyes of faith grow dim ; 
But he is freshest from His hands 

And nearest unto Him ! 

Child-Songs. 



23 

Jane Taylor, 1783; Karl Theodor Korner, 1791. 

More than clouds of purple trail 

In the gold of setting day ; 
More than gleams of wing or sail 

Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 

Glimpses of immortal youth, 

Gleams and glories seen and flown. 

Far-heard voices sweet with truth, 
Airs from viewless Eden blown, — 

Beauty that eludes our grasp. 
Sweetness that transcends our taste. 

Loving hands we may not clasp, 
Shining feet that mock our haste. 

The Vanishers. 

24 

John Marshall, 1755. 

Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead ; 
Forget it in love's service, and the debt 
Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget; 
155 



SEPTEMBER 

Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone 
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own ! 

The Two Rabbins. 



25 



Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794. 

When did Age transfer to Youth 
The hard-gained lessons of its day ? 
Each lip must learn the taste of truth, 
Each foot must feel its way. 

We cannot hold the hands of choice 
That touch or shun life's fateful keys 

The whisper of the inward voice 
Is more than homilies. 



A Name. 



■ 26 

Lord Collingwood, 1750. 

Let winds that blow from heaven refresh. 

Dear Lord, the languid air ; 
And let the weakness of the flesh 

Thy strength of spirit share. 

And, if the eye must fail of light, 

The ear forget to hear, 
Make clearer still the spirit's sight. 

More fine the inward ear ! 
156 



SEPTEMBER 

Be near me in mine hours of need 
To soothe, or cheer, or warn, 

And down these slopes of sunset lead 
As up the hills of morn ! 



My Birthday. 



27 

Bossuefr, 1627. 

It becomes all to hope and labor for the coming 
of that day when the hymns of Cowper and the 
Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy 
of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas 
a Kempis, the simple essays of Woolman and the 
glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded as 
the offspring of one spirit and one faith, — lights 
of a common altar, and precious stones in the 
temple of the one universal Church. 

Pope Night. 



28 



Francis Turner Palgrave, 1824. 

For there was freedom in that wakening time 
Of tender souls ; to differ was not crime ; 
The varying bells made up the perfect chime. 

On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, 

The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole 

Through the stained oriel of each human soul. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

^S7 



SEPTEMBER 



29 



Michaelmas; William, Lord Russell, 1639; Lady Russell 
died, 1723. 

I FAIN would thank Thee that my mortal life 

Has reached the hour (albeit through care and 
pain) 
When Good and Evil, as for final strife, 

Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain ; 
And Michael and his angels once again 

Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night. 
Oh for the faith to read the signs aright 
And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight, 

See Truth's white banner floating on before; 

And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends, 

And base expedients, move to noble ends ; 

See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends, 
And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor, 

Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless 

grain ! 
181:6. What of the Day ? 



30 

For pearls that gem 

A diadem 
The diver in the deep sea dies ; 

The regal right 

We boast to-night 
Is ours through costlier sacrifice ; 
158 



SEPTEMBER 

The blood of Vane, 

His prison pain 
Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, 

And hers whose faith 

Drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God ! 

The shadow rend, 

And o'er us bend, 
O martyrs, with your crowns and palms ; 

Breathe through these throngs 

Your battle songs. 
Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms ! 

To party claims 

And private aims, 
Reveal that august face of Truth, 

Whereto are given 

The age of heaven. 
The beauty of immortal youth. 

The Eve of Election. 



<©tto6er 

FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 

Once more the liberal year laughs out 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; 

Once more with harvest-song and shout 
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 

Our common mother rests and sings, 

Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves ; 

Her lap is full of goodly things, 

Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 

Oh, favors every year made new ! 

Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 
The bounty overruns our due, 

The fulness shames our discontent. 

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on ; 

We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, 
We choose the shadow, but the sun 

That casts it shines behind us still. 

God gives us with our rugged soil 
The power to make it Eden-fair, 

And richer fruits to crown our toil 
Than summer-wedded islands bear. 
i6o 



OCTOBER 

Who murmurs at his lot to-day ? 

Who scorns his native fruit and bloom ? 
Or sighs for dainties far away, 

Beside the bounteous board of home ? 

Thank Heaven, instead, that PVeedom's arm 
Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 

That brave and generous lives can warm 
A clime with northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with flowers 
And piled with fruits, awake again 

Thanksgivings for the golden hours, 
The early and the latter rain ! 
i6i 



OCTOBER 



Rufus Choate, 



The airs of spring may never play 

Among the ripening corn, 
Nor freshness of the flowers of May 

Blow through the autumn morn ; 

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
Through fringed lids to heaven, 

And the pale aster in the brook 
Shall see its image given ; — 

The woods shall wear their robes of praise, 

The south-wind softly sigh. 
And sweet, calm days in golden haze 

Melt down the amber sky. 

My Psalm. 



W. E. Channing died, 1842. 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 
Nor vainly did old genius paint 

God's great and crowning miracle, — 
The hero and the saint ! 

For even in a faithless day 

Can we our sainted ones discern ; 

And feel, while with them on the way, 
Our hearts within us burn. 
162 



OCTOBER 

In vain shall Rome her portals bar, 

And shut from him her saintly prize, 

Whom, in the world's great calendar. 

All men shall canonize. 

Channing. 



3 

George Bancroft, 1800 ; George Ripley, 1802. 

All which is real now remaineth. 

And f adeth never : 
The hand which upholds it now sustaineth 

The soul forever. 

And that cloud itself, which now before thee 

Lies dark in view, 
Shall with beams of light from the inner glory 

Be stricken through. 

And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn 

UprolHng thin, 
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn 

Let sunlight in. 

My Soul and L 



4 

Guizot, 1787; J. F. Millet, 1814. 

Beautiful yet for me this autumn day 
Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far away, 
163 



OCTOBER 

For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, 
To me the pine-woods whisper ; and for me 
Yon river, winding through its vales of calm, 
By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred, 
And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay, 
Flows down in silent gladness to the sea. 
Like a pure spirit to its great reward ! 

The Prisoners of Naples. 



Jonathan Edwards, 1703. 

In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 

Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 

And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent 

The iron links of his argument, 

Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 

The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 

Yet faithful still, in his daily round 

To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found, 

The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art 

Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. 

Had he not seen in the solitudes 

Of his deep and dark Northampton woods 

A vision of love about him fall ? 

Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul, 

But the tenderer glory that rests on them 

Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 

Where never the sun nor moon are known, 

But the Lord and His love are the light alone ! 

The Preacher. 
164 



OCTOBER 
6 

Jenny Lind, 1821. 

Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes 

Therein to Thee allied ; 
All sweet accords of hearts and homes 

In Thee are multiplied. 

Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine, 

Within our earthly sod, 

Most human and yet most divine, 

The flower of man and God ! 

Our Master. 



Robert Dinsmore, 1757. 

A GENIAL, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple 
as a child, and betraying, neither in look nor man- 
ner, that he was accustomed to 

" Feed on thoughts which voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers." 

Peace to him! ... In the ancient burial-ground 
of Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," 
and in view of the old meeting-house, there is a 
mound of earth, where, every spring, green grasses 
tremble in the wind, and the warm sunshine calls 
out the flowers. There, gathered like one of his 
own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps with his 
fathers. 

Robert Dinsmore. 
165 



OCTOBER 
8 

E. C. Stedman, 1833 ; John Hay, 1839. 

Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass 
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, 
Let this slight token of the debt I owe 

Outlive for thee December's frozen day, 
And, like the arbutus budding under snow, 
Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of 

May 
When he who gives it shall have gone the way 
Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall 
know. 

To E. C. S. 
[Dedication to At S7mdown.'\ 

9 

Cervantes, 1549; Giuseppe Verdi, 1813. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, 

Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 

The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 

Its leaves grew green and fair, 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 

Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 
Its harvest-time has come, 
166 



OCTOBER 

We pluck away the frosted leaves, 
And bear the treasure home. 

The Corn-Song. 



lO 

Benjamin West, 1738 ; Hugh Miller, 1802. 

Autumn's earliest frost had given 

To the woods below 
Hues of beauty, such as heaven 

Lendeth to its bow ; 
And the soft breeze from the west 
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 

The Fountain. 



II 



Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer, 
Does the golden-locked fruit bearer 

Through his painted woodlands stray, 
Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
Overlook the long, blue reaches, 
Silver coves and pebbled beaches, 

And green isles of Casco Bay ; 

Nowhere day, for delay. 
With a tenderer look beseeches, 

" Let me with my charmed earth stay." 

The Ranger. 
167 



OCTOBER 

12 

On all his sad or restless moods 
The patient peace of Nature stole ; 

The quiet of the fields and woods 
Sank deep into his soul. 

He worshipped as his fathers did, 
And kept the faith of childish days, 

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
He loved the good old ways. 

The simple tastes, the kindly traits, 
The tranquil air, and gentle speech. 

The silence of the soul that waits 
For more than man to teach. 

My Namesake. 



13 

Elizabeth Fry died, 1845. 

The Gospel of a life like hers 

Is more than books or scrolls. 
From scheme and creed the light goes out, 

The saintly fact survives ; 
The blessed Master none can doubt 

Revealed in holy lives. 

The Friend's Burial. 
168 



OCTOBER 
14 

William Penn, 1644. 

Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought 

His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought 

That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught : 

One faith alone, so broad that all mankind 
Within themselves its secret witness find, 
The soul's communion with the Eternal mind. 

The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, 
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, 
The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

15 

Allan Ramsay, i686 ; Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1805. 

The summer grains were harvested ; the stubble- 
fields lay dry. 

Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the 
pale green waves of rye ; 

But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed 
with wood, 

Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn 
crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks 

that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the 

yellow ear ; 

169 



OCTOBER 

Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a ver- 
dant fold, 

And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's 
sphere of gold. 

The Huskers. 



i6 

Noah Webster, 1758; Robert Stephenson, 1803. 

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, 
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts 

were falling ! 
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within ! 
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts 

all in tune, 
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the 

moon, 
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, 
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her 

team ! 

The Pumpkin. 



17 

Sir John Bowring, 1792. 

With silence only as their benediction, 

God's angels come 
Where, in the shadow of a great affliction. 

The soul sits dumb ! 
170 



OCTOBER 

Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth : 

Our Father's will, 
Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, 

Is mercy still. 

God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly 

What He hath given ; 
They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly 

As in His heaven. 

To My Friend on the Death of His Sister. 



i8 



St. Luke; Henry Taylor, 1800. 

For lo ! in human hearts unseen 

The Healer dwelleth still. 
And they who make His temples clean 

The best subserve His will. 

The holiest task by Heaven decreed, 

An errand all divine, 
The burden of our common need 

To render less is thine. 

The Healer, 
John Adams, 1735 ; Leigh Hunt, 1784. 

It was the pleasant harvest-time, 
When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
And garrets bend beneath their load, 
171 



OCTOBER 

And the old swallow-haunted barns, — 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
Through which the moted sunlight streams, 

And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks, — 

Are filled with summer's ripened stores. 
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 

Mabel Martin. 



20 



Sir Christopher Wren, 1632 ; Thomas Hughes, 1823. 

As long as a wandering pigeon shall search 
The fields below from his white-oak perch, 
When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn. 
And the dry husks fall from the standing corn ; 
As long as Nature shall not grow old, 
Nor drop her work from her doting hold, 
And her care for the Indian corn forget, 
And the yellow rows in pairs to set ; — 
So long shall Christians here be born, 
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn ! — 
By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost, 
Shall never a holy ear be lost, 
But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight. 
Be sown again in the fields of light ! 

The Prophecy of Samuel Sewai 
172 



OCTOBER 



21 



S. T. Coleridge, 1772; Alphonse de Lamartine, 1790. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
grass again ; 

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the 
woodlands gay 

With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun 

rose broad and red, 
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 

sped ; 
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and 

subdued, 
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly 

pictured wood. 

The Huskers. 



22 

Franz Liszt, 1811. 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the 

night, 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow 

light ; 

173 



OCTOBER 

Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified 

the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, 

greener still. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient 
weathercocks ; 

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless 
as rocks. 

No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's 
dropping shell, 

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rus- 
tling as they fell. 

The Huskers. 



23 
Francis Jeffrey, 1773. 

With mingled sound of horns and bells, 

A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, 
Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, 

Like a great arrow through the sky, 
Two dusky hues converged in one. 
Chasing the southward-flying sun; 
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay 
Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



OCTOBER 
24 

Daniel Webster died, 1852. 

Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
O sleeper by the Northern sea, 
The gates of opportunity ! 
God fills the gaps of human need, 
Each crisis brings its word and deed. 
Wise men and strong we did not lack ; 
But still, with memory turning back, 
In the dark hours we thought of thee, 
And thy lone grave beside the sea. 

But, where thy native mountains bare 
Their foreheads to diviner air, 
Fit emblem of enduring fame, 
One lofty summit keeps thy name. 
And evermore that mountain mass 
Seems climbing from the shadowy pass 
To light, as if to manifest 
Thy nobler self, thy life at best ! 

The Lost Occasion. 



25 

Lord Macaulay, iSoo. 

He who lies where the minster's groined arches 
curve down 

To the tomb-crowded transept of England's re- 
nown, 

17s 



OCTOBER 

The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, 
Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned, — 

How vainly he labored to sully with blame 

The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his 

fame ! . . . 
For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive 

him. 
And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive 

him ! 

The Quaker Alumni. 



26 



Count von Moltke, 1800. 

Search thine own heart. What paineth thee 
In others in thyself may be ; 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak ; 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 



27 

The blessing of her quiet life 

Fell on us like the dew ; 
And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 

Were in her very look ; 
We read her face, as one who reads 

A true and holy book : 
176 



GONI 



OCTOBER 

The measure of a blessed hymn, 
To which our hearts could move ; 

The breathing of an inward psalm, 
A canticle of love. 



28 



Erasmus, 1467. 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls ; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 

Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too ; 
On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. . . . 

Gentle eyes we closed below, 
Tender voices heard once more, 

Smile and call us, as they go 
On and onward, still before. 

The Vanishers. 



29 

John Keats, 1795. 

God's angels come not as of old 
The Syrian shepherds knew them ; 

In reddening dawns, in sunset gold. 
And warm noon lights I view them. 
177 



OCTOBER 

Nor need there is, in times like this 
When heaven to earth draws nearer, 

Of wing or song as witnesses 
To make their presence clearer. 

O stream of life, whose swifter flow 

Is of the end forewarning, 
Methinks thy sundown afterglow 

Seems less of night than morning ! 

St. Martin's Summer. 



30 



Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track ; — 

That whereso'er my feet have swerved. 
His chastening turned me back; — 

That more and more a Providence 

Of love is understood. 
Making the springs of time and sense 

Sweet with eternal good ; — 

That death seems but a covered way 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight. 

My Psalm. 
178 



OCTOBER 



All Hallows Eve ; John Evelyn, 1620. 

If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, 
*'a wood fire doth drive away dark spirits," it is, 
nevertheless, also true that around it the simple 
superstitions of our ancestors still love to linger; 
and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of 
which I have spoken are oftenest resorted to. 

Within the circle of the light of the open fire 
safely might the young conjurers question destiny; 
for none but kindly and gentle messengers from 
Wonderland could venture among them. And who 
of us, looking back to those long autumnal even- 
ings of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire 
rested on the beloved faces of home, does not feel 
that there is truth and beauty in what the quaint 
old author just quoted affirms ? " As the spirits of 
darkness grow stronger in the dark, so good spirits, 
which are angels of light, are multiplied and strength- 
ened, not only by the divine light of the sun and 
stars, but also by the light of our common wood- 
fires." 

Charms and Fairy Faith. 
179 



A DAY 

Talk not of sad November, when a day 
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, 
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, 

Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray. 

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines 

Lay their long shafts of shadow : the small rill, 
Singing a pleasant song of summer still, 

A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines. 

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees, 
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more ; 
But still the squirrel hoards his winter store. 

And drops his nutshells from the shag-bark trees. 

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper : high 
Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, 
Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow 

And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy. 

O gracious beauty, ever new and old ! 

O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear 
When the low sunshine warns the closing year 

Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold ! 
1 80 



NOVEMBER 

Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing 
The sweet day yields ; and, not disconsolate, 
With the calm patience of the woods I wait 

For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring ! 

l8i 



NOVEMBER 



All Saints; Antonio Canova, 1757. 

Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
The whitest of the saints of God ! 
To show thee where their feet were set, 
The light which led them shineth yet. 

The footprints of the life divine, 
Which marked their path, remain in thine; 
And that great Life, transfused in theirs, 
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers ! 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 



2 

Marie Antoinette, 1755. 

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres 

of the mind, 
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the 

darkness undefined ; 
Round us throng the grim projections of the heart 

and of the brain. 
And our pride of strength is weakness, and the 

cunning hand is vain. 

In the dark we cry like children ; and no answer 

from on high 
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white 

wings downward fly; 

182 



NOVEMBER 

But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, 

and not to sight, 
And our prayers themselves drive backward all the 

spirits of the night ! 

The Garrison of Cape Ann. 



3 

William Cullen Bryant, 1794. 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song; 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye, familiar grown 

With charms to common sight denied, — 
The marvellous gift he shares alone 

With him who walked on Rydal-side. 

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears ; 

We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

1864. Bryant on his Birthday. 



4 

James Montgomery, 1771. 

The grass is browning on the hills; 

No pale, belated flowers recall 
The astral fringes of the rills, 
183 



NOVEMBER 

And drearily the dead vines fall, 
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall. 

Yet through the gray and sombre wood, 
Against the dusk of fir and pine, 

Last of their floral sisterhood. 

The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, 
The tawny gold of Afric's mine ! 

Hazel-Blossoms. 



Washington Allston, 1779. 

Along the river's summer walk. 

The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
And trembles on its arid stalk 

The hoar plume of the golden-rod. 
And on a ground of sombre fir. 
And azure-studded juniper. 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet 
wild-rose ! 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



6 

C. C. Felton, 1807; Richard Jefferies, 1848. 

Our hearts grow cold, 
We lightly hold 
A right which brave men died to gain ; 
184 



NOVEMBER 

The stake, the cord, 

The axe, the sword, 

Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 

Look from the sky, 

Like God's great eye. 
Thou solemn moon, with searching beam, 

Till in the sight 

Of thy pure light 
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 

The Eve of Election. 



That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air. 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
In purple distance fair; — 

That all the jarring notes of life 
Seem blending in a psalm, 

And all the angles of its strife 
Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west-winds play ; 

And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day. 



My Psalm. 



185 



NOVEMBER 
8 

Robert, Earl Lytton, 1831. 

The summer and the winter here 

Midway a truce are holding, 
A soft, consenting atmosphere 

Their tents of peace enfolding. 

The silent woods, the lonely hills, 
Rise solemn in their gladness ; 

The quiet that the valley fills 
Is scarcely joy or sadness. 

St. Martin's Summer. 



My autumn time and Nature's hold 

A dreamy tryst together, 
And, both grown old, about us fold 

The golden-tissued weather. 

I lean my heart against the day 

To feel its bland caressing; 
I will not let it pass away 

Before it leaves its blessing. 

St. Martin's Summer. 



186 



NOVEMBER 
lo 

Luther, 1483; Goldsmith, 1728; Schiller, 1759; S. G. Howe, 1801. 

Smile not, fair unbeliever ! 

One man, at least, I know, 
Who might wear the crest of Bayard 

Or Sidney's plume of snow. 

True as the knights of story, 

Sir Lancelot and his peers, 
Brave in his calm endurance 

As they in tilt of spears. 

Wouldst know him now ? Behold him, 

The Cadmus of the blind, 
Giving the dumb lip language. 

The idiot clay a mind. 

The Hero. 



II 

Martinmas; T. B. Aldrich, 1836. 

Though flowers have perished at the touch 

Of Frost, the early comer, 
I hail the season loved so much, 

The good St. Martin's summer. 

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, 
And thin moon curving o'er it! 

The old year's darling, latest born, 
More loved than all before it ! 
187 



NOVEMBER 

The sweet day, opening as a flower 

Unfolds its petals tender, 
Renews for us at noontide's hour 

The summer's tempered splendor. 

St. Martin's Summer. 



Richard Baxter, 1615. 

The " Call to the Unconverted " and the " Saints' 
Everlasting Rest " belong to no time or sect. They 
speak the universal language of the wants and de- 
sires of the human soul. They take hold of the 
awful verities of life and death, righteousness and 
judgment to come. Through them the suffering 
and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken 
in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of ten- 
derest love and pity, to the hearts of the genera- 
tions which have succeeded him. 

Richard Baxter. 
St. Augustine, 354; Tegner, 17S2; Edwin Booth, 1833. 

The fourteen centuries fall away 

Between us and the Afric saint. 
And at his side we urge, to-day, 
The immemorial quest and old complaint- 
No outward sign to us is given, — 

From sea or earth comes no reply ; 
Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 
He vainly questioned, bends our frozen sky. 



NOVEMBER 

No victory comes of all our strife, — 

From all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 
With the old question on her awful lips. 

The Shadow and the Light. 



14 

L. J. M. Daguerre, 1787; Sir Charles Lyell, 1797. 

I HAVE no answer for myself or thee, 

Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ; 

" All is of God that is, and is to be ; 

And God is good." Let this suffice us still, 
Resting in childlike trust upon His will 

Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the 
ill. 

Trust. 



15 

William Cowper, 1731; R. H. Dana, 1787. 

And if the tender ear be jarred 

That, haply, hears by turns 
The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 

The pastoral pipe of Burns, 
No discord mars His perfect plan 

Who gave them both a tongue ; 
Fo;: he who sings the love of man 

The love of God hath sung ! 

Burks Festival. 
189 



NOVEMBER 
i6 

John Bright, 1811 ; Charles Eliot Norton, 1827, 

Press on ! — the triumph shall be won 
Of common rights and equal laws, 

The glorious dream of Harrington, 
And Sidney's good old cause : 

Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup; 

And, plucking not the highest down. 
Lifting the lowest up. 

To THE Reformers of England. 



17 

Sir Charles Eastlake, 1793; George Grote, 1794. 

The dear Christ dwells not afar, 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here, amidst the poor and blind, 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life. He lives to-day. 

The Meeting. 



190 



' ' NOVEMBER 
i8 

David Wilkie, 1785; Asa Gray, 1810. 

O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands 

Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands, 

The sea's long level dim with rain. 
Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come, 
And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, 
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn 
atone. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



19 

Elisha Mulford, 1833. 

Unnoted as the setting of a star 

He passed ; and sect and party scarcely knew 
When from their midst a sage and seer with- 
drew 

To fitter audience, where the great dead are 
In God's republic of the heart and mind, 
Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 

Mulford. 

20 

Thomas Chatterton, 7752 ; Queen Margherita, 1851. 

Forever round the Mercy-seat 

The guiding lights of Love shall burn ; 
191 



NOVEMBER 

But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn? 

What if thine eye refuse to see, 

Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, 
And thou a willing captive be, 

Thyself thy own dark jail ? 

Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess. 
As the long years of God unroll. 

To make thy dreary selfishness 
The prison of a soul ! 

The Answer. 



21 

Bryan Waller Procter, 1787. 

Never yet in darkest mood 
Doubted I that Thou wast good. 
Nor mistook my will for fate, 
Pain of sin for heavenly hate, — 
Never dreamed the gates of pearl 
Rise from out the burning marl. 
Or that good can only live 
Of the bad conservative. 
And through counterpoise of hell 
Heaven alone be possible. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 



[92 



NOVEMBER 

22 
" George Eliot," 1819. 

Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer 
Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year 
Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings 
Nor thieves can take away. When all the things 
Thou callest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, 
Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all. 

Laying up Treasure. 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, 
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than 

thine ! 
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to ex- 
press. 
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less. 
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, 
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine 

grow. 
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie ! 

The Pumpkin. 

24 

Laurence Sterne, 1713; H. T. Buckle, 1821. 

The horn, on Sabbath morning, through the still 
and frosty air. 
From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to 
sermon and to prayer, 
193 



NOVEMBER 

To the goodly house of worship, where, in order 

due and fit, 
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the 

people sit ; 

Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire 

before the clown, 
From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray 

frock, shading down. 

Mary Garvin. 



25 



The wise old Doctor went his round, 
Just pausing at our door to say, 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light. 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

Snow-Bound. 
194 



NOVEMBER 

Empress Marie Feodorovna, 1847. 

Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and 

from West, 
From North and from South come the pilgrim and 

guest, 
When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round 

his board 
The old broken links of affection restored, 
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once 

more, 
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled 

before. 

The Pumpkin. 



27 

Frances Anne Kemble, 1809. 

Still on the lips of all we question 
The finger of God's silence lies ; 

Will the lost hands in ours be folded } 
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? 

O friend ! no proof beyond this yearning, 
This outreach of our hearts, we need ; 

God will not mock the hope He giveth, 
No love He prompts shall vainly plead. 

No dreary splendors wait our coming 
Where 4"apt ghost sits from ghost apart ; 
195 



NOVEMBER 

Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, 
The harvest-gathering of the heart. 

To LvDiA Maria Child. 



28 

William Blake, 1757. 

O Christ of God ! whose life and death 

Our own have reconciled, 
Most quietly, most tenderly 

Take home Thy star-named child ! 

Thy grace is in her patient eyes, 
Thy words are on her tongue ; 

The very silence round her seems 
As if the angels sung. 

Her smile is as a listening child's 

Who hears its mother call ; 
The lilies of Thy perfect peace 

About her pillow fall. 

Oh, less for her than for ourselves 
We bow our heads and pray ; 

Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, 
To Thee shall point the way ! 



Vesta 



196 



NOVEMBER 
29 

Sir Philip Sidney, 1554 

Better to use the bit, than throw 
The reins all loose on fancy's neck. 

The liberal range of Art should be 

The breadth of Christian liberty, 
Restrained alone by challenge and alarm 
Where its charmed footsteps tread the border 



land of harm. 



The Tent on the Beach. 



30 

St. Andrew; Jonathan Swift, 1667; Theodor Mommsen, 1817, 

Let the lowliest task be mine. 
Grateful, so the work be Thine ; 
Let me find the humblest place 
In the shadow of Thy grace : 
Blest to me were any spot 
Where temptation whispers not. 
If there be some weaker one, 
Give me strength to help him on ; 
If a blinder soul there be, 
Let me guide him nearer Thee, 
Make my mortal dreams come true 
With the work I fain would do ; 
Clothe with life the weak intent, 
Let me be the thing I meant. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 
197 



SDeccmbct 

A CHRISTMAS CARMEN 



Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, 

The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands ; 

Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the 

morn. 
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born ! 

With glad jubilations 

Bring hope to the nations ! 
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun : 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 



Sing the bridal of nations ! with chorals of love 
Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove, 
Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord, 
And the voice of the world is the voice of the 
Lord ! 
Clasp hands of the nations 
In strong gratulations: 
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
198 



DECEMBER 

III 

Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace ; 
East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel 

cease : 
Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, 
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man ! 
Hark! joining in chorus 
The heavens bend o'er us ! 
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun. 

All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
199 



DECEMBER 



Alexandra, Princess of Wales, 1844, 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
That checked, mid-vein, the circHng race 
Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Snow-Bound. 



Pedro II. of Brazil, 1825. 

To Thee our full humanity, 
Its joys and pains, belong ; 

The wrong of man to man on Thee 
Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

To do Thy will is more than praise, 
As words are less than deeds, 
200 



DECEMBER 

And simple trust can find Thy ways 
We miss with chart of creeds. 

Alone, O Love ineffable ! 

Thy saving name is given ; 
To turn aside from Thee is hell, 

To walk with Thee is heaven ! 

Our Master. 



3 

Mary Lamb, 1764; Sir Frederick Leighton, 1830. 

O Love Divine ! — whose constant beam 

Shines on the eyes that will not see, 
And waits to bless us, while we dream 
Thou leavest us because we turn from Thee ! 

All souls that struggle and aspire. 

All hearts of prayer by Thee are lit ; 
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. 

Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed Thou know'st, 

Wide as our need Thy favors fall ; 
The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. 

The Shadow and the Light. 
201 



DECEMBER 
4 

Thomas Carlyle, 1795. 

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
Wherewith mankind have deified 
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride ! 

Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 

The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
It yet shall touch His garment's fold, 

And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold. 

The Over-Heart. 



5 

Martin Van Buren, 1782 ; " E. Marlitt,"' 1825. 

Age brought him no despairing 
Of the world's future faring ; 
In human nature still 
He found more good than ill. 

Hater of din and riot, 
He lived in days unquiet ; 
And, lover of all beauty, 
Trod the hard ways of duty. 

An Autograph. 

202 



DECEMBER 
6 

R. H. Barham, 1788. 

Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, • 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 

What matter, I or they ? 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made ? 



Hail to the coming singers ! 
Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 
Forward I reach and share 
All that they sing and dare. 



Mv Triumph. 



Elizabeth Whittier, 1815. 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 

Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 

203 



DECEMBER 

I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 

Snow-Bound. 



8 

Lady Anne Barnard, 1750. 

Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, 
Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, 

Life's myriads blending into one, 
In blank annihilation blest. 

No! I have friends in Spirit Land, — 
Not shadows in a shadowy band. 

Not others, but themselves are they.. 
And still I think of them the same 
As when the Master's summons came ; 
Their change, — the holy mornlight breaking 
Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking, — 

A change from twilight into day. 

Lucy Hooper. 

9 

John Milton, 1608. 

The new world honors him whose lofty plea 
For England's freedom made her own more sure, 
204 



DECEMBER 

Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be 

Their common freehold while both worlds endure. 

Milton. 
[^Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margarefs 
Church., Westminster.] 



lO 

William Lloyd Garrison, 1805. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
We heard a tender undersong ; 

Thy very wrath from pity grew, 

From love of man thy hate of wrong. 

Now past and present are as one ; 

The life below is life above ; 
Thy mortal years have but begun 

The immortality of love. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
The work below of man for man ; 

With the white legions of the stars 
Do service such as angels can. 



Garrison. 



II 

Hector Berlioz, 1803 ; Alfred de Musset, 1810. 

O LIVING friends who love me ! 

dear ones gone above me ! 
Careless of other fame, 

1 leave to you my name. 

205 



DECEMBER 

Hide it from idle praises. 

Save it from evil phrases : 

Why, when dear lips that spake it 

Are dumb, should strangers wake it ? 

Let the thick curtain fall ; 
I better know than all 
How little I have gained. 
How vast the unattained. 

My Triumph. 



12 

John Jay, 1745 ; F. H. Hedge, 1805. 

Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives 

The eternal epic of the man. 
He wisest is who only gives. 

True to himself, the best he can ; 
Who, drifting in the winds of praise, 
The inward monitor obeys ; 
And, with the boldness that confesses fear, 
Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience 
steer. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



13 

Artliur Peiirliyn Stanley, 1815; Phillips Brooks, 1835. 

A TRUE life is at once interpreter and proof of 
the Gospel. 

Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 
206 



' DECEMBER 

Still shines the light of holy lives 

Like star-beams over doubt; 
Each sainted memor}-, Christlike, drives 

Some dark possession out. 

William Forster. 



14 

Washington died, 1799. 

Our first and best ! — his ashes lie 

Beneath his own Virginian sky. 
Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave, 
The storm that swept above thy sacred grave ! 

For, ever in the awful strife 

And dark hours of the nation's life. 

Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning 
word. 

Their father's voice his erring children heard ! 

The Vow of Washington, 
La Rochefoucauld, 1613. 

O Lord and Master of us all ! 

Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 

We test our lives by Thine. 

Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight ; 
And, naked to Thy glance, 
207 



DECEMBER 

Our secret sins are in the light 
Of Thy pure countenance. 

Thy healing pains, a keen distress 
Thy tender light shines in; 

Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 
Thy grace the pang of sin. 



Our Master. 



i6 

George Whitefield, 1714; Jane Austen, 1775. 

Lo ! by the Merrimack Whitefield stands 

In the temple that never was made by hands, — 

Curtains of azure, and crystal wall. 

And dome of the sunshine over all ! — 

A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 

Blown about on the winds of fame ; 

Now as an angel of blessing classed, 

And now as a mad enthusiast. 

Called in his youth to sound and gauge 

The moral lapse of his race and age, 

And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 

Of human frailty and perfect law; 

Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 

Its goad to his fiery temperament, 

Up and down the world he went, 

A John the Baptist crying, Repent ! 

The Preacher. 

208 



DECEMBER 

Beethoven, 1770; John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807. 

Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays 

On word and work irrevocably done, 

Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer and praise, 

Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. 

Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise 

I see my life-work through your partial eyes; 

Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs 

A higher value than of right belongs, 

You do but read between the written lines 

The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 

1877. Response. 



18 



Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Slavery, 1865. 

How they pale, 
Ancient myth and song and tale. 

In this wonder of our days. 
When the cruel rod of war 
Blossoms white with righteous law, 

And the wrath of man is praise ! 

Ring and swing, 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 
209 



DECEMBER 

Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns, 

Who alone is Lord and God ! 



Laus Deo. 



19 

He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 

The soft hand's light caressing, 
And heard the tremble of her voice, 

As if a fault confessing. 

" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word : 

I hate to go above you, 
Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — 

" Because, you see, I love you ! " 

Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 

Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing ! 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 

How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss, 

Like her, — because they love him. 

In School-Days. 



DECEMBER 

20 

Let the icy north-wind blow 
The trumpets of the coming storm. 
To arrowy sleet and bhnding snow 

Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, 
As gayly as I did of old ; 
And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, 
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again. 
The Last Walk in Autumn. 



21 

Leopold von Ranke, 1795 ; Lord Beaconsfield, 1804. 

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual 
life of old. 

Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; outward, 
mean and coarse and cold ; 

Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and 
vulgar clay, 

Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hod- 
den gray. 

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but 

through the din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life 

behind steal in ; 

211 



DECEMBER 

And the lore of home and fireside, and the legen- 
dary rhyme, 

Make the task of duty lighter which the true man 
owes his time. 

The Garrison of Cape Ann. 



22 



Landing of the Pilgrims, 1620. 

Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 

And nursed by winter gales, 
With petals of the sleeted spars, 

And leaves of frozen sails ! 

What had she in those dreary hours, 

Within her ice-rimmed bay, 
In common with the wild-wood flowers, 

The first sweet smiles of May ? 

" God wills it : here our rest shall be, 

Our years of wandering o'er ; 
For us the Mayflower of the sea 

Shall spread her sails no more." 

So live the fathers in their sons, 

Their sturdy faith be ours, 
And ours the love that overruns 

Its rocky strength with flowers. 

The Mayflowers. 
212 



DECEMBER 
23 

Sir Richard Arkwright, 1732 ; C. A. Sainte-Beuve, 1804. 

Ask not why to these bleak hills 
I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
To bear the winter's lingering chills, 

The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
I dream of lands where summer smiles. 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be 

sweet, 
Could I not feel thy soil. New England, at my 
feet ! 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



24 

George Crabbe, 1754; Matthew Arnold, 1822- 

Who gives and hides the giving hand, 
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise, 
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs 

The burden of the sea and land. 

Who gives to whom hath naught been given, 
His gift in need, though small indeed 
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed, 
Is large as earth and rich as heaven. 

Giving and Taking. 
213 



DECEMBER 

Christmas; Sir Isaac Newton, 1642 ; William Collins, 1720. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 

What may Thy service be ? — 
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 

But simply following Thee. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around. 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, 

Thy inward altars raise ; 
Its faith and hope Thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise ! 

Our Master. 



26 

St. Stephen ; Thomas Gray, 1716. 

I LISTEN, from no mortal tongue, 
To hear the song the angels sung ; 
And wait within myself to know 
The Christmas lilies bud and blow. 

The outward symbols disappear 
From him whose inward sight is clear; 
214 



DECEMBER 

And small must be the choice of days 
To him who fills them all with praise ! 

The Mystic's Christmas. 



27 

St. John Evangelist ; Abigail Whittier (the Poet's Mother), 
died 1857. 

And she was with us, living o'er again 

Her life in ours, despite of years and pain, — 

The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. 

Beautiful in her holy peace as one 

Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, 

Glorified in the setting of the sun ! 

Her memory makes our common landscape seem 
Fairer than any of which painters dream, 
Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream ; 

For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold 
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, 
And loved with us the beautiful and old. 

Proem to Mabel Martin. 



28 

Innocents' Day ; C. M. Sedgwick, 1789. 

Of such the kingdom ! — Teach Thou us, 

O Master most divine, 
To feel the deep significance 

Of these wise words of Thine ! 
215 



DECEMBER 

The haughty eye shall seek in vain 

What innocence beholds ; 
No cunning finds the key of heaven, 

No strength its gate unfolds. 

Alone to guilelessness and love 

That gate shall open fall ; 
The mind of pride is nothingness, 

The childlike heart is all ! 

Child-Songs. 



29 

W. E. Gladstone, 1809. 

What is really momentous and all-important 
with us is the present, by which the future is shaped 
and colored. 

The Better Land. 

Then of what is to be; and of what is done, 

Why queriest thou ? — 
The past and the time to be are one, 

And both are now ! 

My Soul and I. 



30 



Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
A minster rich in holy effigies, 
And bearing on entablature and frieze 

The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 
216 



DECEMBER 

Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit ; 

And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint 
The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, 
Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ ! 
But only when on form and word obscure 
Falls from above the white supernal light 
We read the mystic characters aright, 
And life informs the silent portraiture, 
Until we pause at last, awe-held, before 
The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. 

The Book. 



31 

James T. Fields, 1816. 

He knew each living pundit well, 

Could weigh the gifts of him or her, 
And well the market value tell 

Of poet and philosopher. 
But if he lost, the scenes behind, 
Somewhat of reverence vague and blind. 
Finding the actors human at the best, 
No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed. 

His boyhood fancies not outgrown. 

He loved himself the singer's art; 
Tenderly, gently, by his own 

He knew and judged an author's heart. 
No Rhadamanthine brow of doom 
Bowed the dazed pedant from his room ; 
217 



DECExMBER 

And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, 
Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



Beneath the moonlight and the snow 

Lies dead my latest year ; 
The winter winds are wailing low 

Its dirges in my ear, 

I grieve not with the moaning wind 

As if a loss befell ; 
Before me, even as behind, 

God is, and all is well ! 

My Birthday. 



Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
What hues wherewith our Northern clime 

Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, 
What airs outblown from ferny dells, 

And clover-bloom and sweet-briar smells. 
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and 

flowers. 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round 
been ours ! 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 
2l8 



